Karanka just tweeted this

All the ups and downs.......including the circus away at Charlton....and the final run in with some momentous injury time goals!!!!!
 
I do have to also provide the counterargument that we were doing very well up until Christmas. That Ramirez episode just seemed to destroy everything, and once free-fall starts, it is hard to stop.
We weren't that great. The first half of the season was Played 19, Won 4, Drawn 6, Lost 9.

We only had five league wins that season, and two of them were against a Sunderland side that finished bottom. It's easily the most depressed I've been as a Boro fan, largely because I thought Karanka's tactic was to hope that 38 goalless draws would keep us up. With hindsight, we should have amicably parted company with him after we'd got promoted.
 
His reign here will always have bittersweet memories for me. Not for what he did. As I feel that he did a brilliant job for the club over the period. His time here just had a sad ending.

During Karanka's time here one of my older brothers was diagnosed with cancer. My wife and I arranged to come over to visit my brother. We also booked tickets to go and see the Brighton match afterwards.

My wife lived in various parts of Sussex. For a while she lived not far from Brighton on a fast train line. When she was young she used to go clubbing in Brighton. She adopted Brighton as her team. Even though she was not a great football fan.

We were staying in a hotel in town after having visited my brother. So we were right at the centre of the celebrations. What a night that was.

The sad thing is that my brother died before the end of the Premier League season. So at the end of the season I was grieving for both my brother and the Boro. The two things will always be linked in my mind.
 
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We weren't that great. The first half of the season was Played 19, Won 4, Drawn 6, Lost 9.
With one or two notable exceptions, that's what a decent first half of a season looks like when you're first promoted. Even bog standard teams like crystal palace have been making hundreds of millions season on end. It's hard to compete.

Would have been crazy to sack him after promotion. I still find it hard to believe after monk, Southgate, woody, Strachan and Pulis that people don't appreciate managers that are successful for us are a rarity to be treasured and can't be replaced easily.
 
That late, late Leicester penalty is where it all started going wrong.

Win that and assume we still beat Hull, we'd have been significantly above Leicester in the table and there'd probably have been less issue with Ramirez.
 
I tend to think you need to hit the ground running when you've just been promoted. Run on adrenaline and rack your points up early.

Once he returned after the big bust-up the previous season, I thought we should have agreed a bit of the old entente cordiale to get us promoted but then said goodbye after that. I really wish we had.
 
Not that fond of the bloke to be honest, but appreciate the fact that we got promoted with him at the helm.
 
Never really understood how he survived the Charlton meltdown, can't think off the top of my head of any other club where the manager misses a game as he's told to stay away from the club and then comes back to lead the team to promotion. Gave us some fantastic times which we should have built on.
 
Never really understood how he survived the Charlton meltdown, can't think off the top of my head of any other club where the manager misses a game as he's told to stay away from the club and then comes back to lead the team to promotion. Gave us some fantastic times which we should have built on.

Yeah, that's it for me. When your manager storms out after a bust-up six weeks before the end of a season when you're heading for automatic promotion, there's something going seriously wrong. Great that he actually came back and finished the job, but we should have drawn a line under it then.
 
That late, late Leicester penalty is where it all started going wrong.

Win that and assume we still beat Hull, we'd have been significantly above Leicester in the table and there'd probably have been less issue with Ramirez.
I always think back to that game. It was a good performance and De Roon blew it with that daft challenge.
 
He got some decent funding when we were in the Championship for a few new players and built on some key Mogga signings, but AK was the glue and puppet master. A lot of fans like me took to him straight away and he responded. Like Juninho, AK took the club for what it was, not its image in the National media - they saw a football area where football is life for a lot of people and has been for many years. Its great others on here still feel something for him :cry: and that time too.

Neil Warnock can do it as well when fans are hopefully back, he's maybe a bit of an old lion now, but he's still got that glint in his eye and I would think some lead in his pencil and has benefit of experience that AK did not have. He has had to deal with more baggage than AK and not had a fortune to spend, but I am quitely confident. ;)
 
Never really understood how he survived the Charlton meltdown, can't think off the top of my head of any other club where the manager misses a game as he's told to stay away from the club and then comes back to lead the team to promotion. Gave us some fantastic times which we should have built on.
Could say it makes the story even better, didn’t we go on to win the next 4 games in a row and actually go unbeaten for the rest of the season?
 
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