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Does Assombalonga's Millwall omission signal end for him at Boro?
Assombalonga was fit for selection at Millwall but Neil Warnock chose to leave him out
www.gazettelive.co.uk
Does Assombalonga's Millwall omission signal end for him at Boro?
Assombalonga was fit for selection at Millwall but Neil Warnock chose to leave him out
www.gazettelive.co.uk
Does Britt Assombalonga’s Millwall omission signal the end for him at Middlesbrough?
Assombalonga was fit for selection at Millwall but Neil Warnock chose to leave him out.By
Craig Johns
- 06:00, 22 MAR 2021
It was a rather ominous response from Neil Warnock when asked about Britt Assombalonga’s absence at Millwall.
The striker was not in the squad for the second straight game - a third time in four the highest-paid player at the club failed to even make the bench.
After Preston Warnock had put the former captain’s absence down to a slight hamstring issue but there was no such protection after a bitter defeat in the capital.
"Was Britt's absence just still the hamstring?" Warnock was asked after the 1-0 defeat.
"No," Warnock responded rather nonchalantly. "He's fit enough but I thought it was time to give Josh (Coburn) a bit of experience away from home and I'd always bring Fletch on before him at the moment, so he was fit to be selected."
It was a telling response.
The striker was brought in from Nottingham Forest in 2017 for a reported club-record fee of £15 million as Steve Gibson backed Garry Monk and spent big in an effort to bounce back to the Premier League at the first time of asking.
Four years on, and with Assombalonga on the verge of a Boro exit for nothing, considering his time at the club as anything but a failure would leave most questioning your sanity.
Boro remain in the Championship and Assombalonga, for the most part, has struggled to hit top form.
Boro's accounts for the year leading to June 2020 were released just ahead of the Millwall game. They showed a record £35m loss largely thanks to the end of the parachute payments.
The wage-bill was cut from £40m to £31m from 2019 to 2020 and will have been further trimmed with the exit of several first teamers last summer. The summer exit of the club's highest paid player Assombalonga now appears inevitable.
Warnock hasn't been quite as ruthless as he was to others last summer, but, injuries excluding, we very well might have seen the last of Assombalonga in a Boro shirt.
The fact Warnock went with 18-year-old Josh Coburn over him was telling. It makes sense too. Coburn is the future, while it increasingly appears Assombalonga is the past, at Boro at least.
Despite his struggles, Warnock made the striker captain at the start of this season. Could the veteran boss finally be the man to get the striker firing on Teesside?
There were glimpses of what he can do on his day.
Birmingham away just before Christmas stands out as one of his better days as he proved a nightmare to cope with at St Andrew's.
He enjoyed a long run in the team after that - for a long time preferred to Chuba Akpom as Ashley Fletcher was still working his way back from a hamstring injury.
But he never looked like becoming the talisman up top that Warnock so desires.
In truth, we can't write him off completely yet. We can't yet say with certainty he's played his last game for Middlesbrough.
Despite the defeat at Millwall, results elsewhere mean Boro are still in the race for the top-six with eight games to go. Should they stay in the race but suffer an injury-crisis (let's be honest, with their luck this season on that front it's not beyond the realms of possibility), would Warnock still prefer young Coburn over Assombalonga?
There would be a strong argument to made that he should, but equally, in protecting the bright youngster, throwing him into such a high-pressured scenario would perhaps not be the fairest thing he could do. It would be sink or swim, but who knows, the 18-year-old might swim.
Assombalonga, you feel, would be treading water at best, which has been the case for most of his time at the club.
He'll no doubt have his reasons why it hasn't worked out, and would argue he's had to try and adapt to the preferences of four different permanent managers and different playing styles in his four years on Teesside.
But he won't be deemed a success at Boro.
If I was a betting man, my money would be on Assombalonga's last Boro appearance coming in that 13-minute cameo from the bench in an already-won game against Stoke.
It would be an unceremonious end to four years at Middlesbrough with little to cheer about.
