Karanka

WeeGord said:
He's been to two basket case clubs, poor choices by him to go to them both but I certainly think his time at Boro holds much more away.

I don't get the Karanka hate, since we were relegated with a whimper under Southgate the only consistently feel good times at the club where we really believed in ourselves and ability to achieve something was under Karanka.
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I certainly don't hate him & the season and a half before the Premier League was great but he was totally out of his depth in the premier League and it was clear (to me, in my opinion) from very early on that we would not get a second promotion. He couldn't handle Downing and others I suspect. If he'd gone earlier we might have got a decent manager in rather than having to suffer Steve Agnew and who knows then what might have happened.
 
WeeGord said:
He's been to two basket case clubs, poor choices by him to go to them both but I certainly think his time at Boro holds much more sway.

I don't get the Karanka hate, since we were relegated with a whimper under Southgate the only consistently feel good times at the club where we really believed in ourselves and ability to achieve something was under Karanka.
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No need for the 'hate' label. We scrambled promotion and he lost the plot when the pressure was on. He was never going to be up to the Premier League. And these 'basket case clubs' are on a par with us.
 
DCI_Gene_Hunt said:
I certainly don't hate him & the season and a half before the Premier League was great but he was totally out of his depth in the premier League and it was clear (to me, in my opinion) from very early on that we would not get a second promotion. He couldn't handle Downing and others I suspect. If he'd gone earlier we might have got a decent manager in rather than having to suffer Steve Agnew and who knows then what might have happened.
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Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
No need for the 'hate' label. We scrambled promotion and he lost the plot when the pressure was on. He was never going to be up to the Premier League. And these 'basket case clubs' are on a par with us.
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The 'hate' label wasn't directed at anyone in particular and apologies if anyone thinks I'm having a go, I'm not. It was a generic term based on the numerous threads over the years where I have seen posters really going to town on Karanka, unjustifiably IMHO.

He was far from perfect and found keeping his emotions in check difficult. However, first half of the season in the PL we held our own and it was the January transfer window that started the downward spiral along with Ramirez deciding to put himself around town.

We needed more creativity and he'd identified Jese, Bojan and Snodgrass as the players we needed. Instead he was given Gestede and Bamford. That's when it all started getting derailed.

The second half of the PL season was a disaster I accept, but the blame goes for further than just Karanka and indeed Gibson needs to shoulder his share of blame too.
 
Paintolerance said:
Does anyone honestly think, if he had stayed, we had gone down, and Gibson had funded him to to the tune he did Monk, we wouldn't have been promoted?
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Difficult to say, but it worked for Burnley and Norwich, and I’m sure both spent a lot less that we did after relegation. I don’t know for sure but I wouldn’t be surprised if we spent more than both combined.
 
DCI_Gene_Hunt said:
I certainly don't hate him & the season and a half before the Premier League was great but he was totally out of his depth in the premier League and it was clear (to me, in my opinion) from very early on that we would not get a second promotion. He couldn't handle Downing and others I suspect. If he'd gone earlier we might have got a decent manager in rather than having to suffer Steve Agnew and who knows then what might have happened.
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I don’t know how anyone can say he was out of his depth when we got to December

the turning point was Man Utd/Burnley away. Almost had 3 points at utd, and then a valdes mistake and we then went into the January window which caused the tension. Until the we were holding our own
 
GazC_MFC said:
I don’t know how anyone can say he was out of his depth when we got to December

the turning point was Man Utd/Burnley away. Almost had 3 points at utd, and then a valdes mistake and we then went into the January window which caused the tension. Until the we were holding our own
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By end of Dec we'd played 18 games & had 17 points.

Karanka's mindset was to avoid defeat not try to win.
 
GazC_MFC said:
Got to December, I didn’t say end of
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I just counted up to end of Dec - no big deal.

My point is that he was out of his depth, he set up every game to avoid defeat and couldn't manage players properly. We were never going to stay up that season & he was never going to get us promoted the next.

As I said previously the season & half ending in promotion was great and all credit to him but he just wasn't good enough for the Premier league & the jobs he's had since back that up.
 
Karanka was holding the club back. The stuff we played when the shackles came off was outstanding, champagne football. If we had kept him on there was no way we would have been promoted. The fact that we had continually been in the top 4 with him as manager would have no bearing on our future. When has something that has happened in the past ever impacted on what happens in the future? We should have fired him before we got promoted and forced Martin O'Neill to manage the club, or a random German.
 
The rose tinted glasses with karanka never ceases to amaze me. Some good times under him but some dire games as well, no plan B, language divide between players and staff, walking out at the worst time, 85th min subs for defenders when losing 1-0 etc

we got promoted on the last day of the season, drawing 1-1 against 10 men, via goal difference despite having stuani, who went on to be one of la liga top scorers for a few seasons and Rhodes, one of the top scorers in the championship, and our top scorer had something like 7 goals that season

if we hadn't signed Ramirez, who basically reignited our season with a flurry of goals and ending up joint top scorer, we wouldn't have gone up and very nearly didn't.
 
ThatFragranceGuy said:
The rose tinted glasses with karanka never ceases to amaze me. Some good times under him but some dire games as well, no plan B, language divide between players and staff, walking out at the worst time, 85th min subs for defenders when losing 1-0 etc

we got promoted on the last day of the season, drawing 1-1 against 10 men, via goal difference despite having stuani, who went on to be one of la liga top scorers for a few seasons and Rhodes, one of the top scorers in the championship, and our top scorer had something like 7 goals that season

if we hadn't signed Ramirez, who basically reignited our season with a flurry of goals and ending up joint top scorer, we wouldn't have gone up and very nearly didn't.
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Who was responsible for signing Ramirez though? It's not as if Karanka got lucky and was given Ramirez as a "gift". Surely he deserves credit for having the nouse to recognise that a player like Ramirez was needed and bringing him in.

Fair enough, in hindsight maybe Stuani should have been given more games playing as a no 9, but we know Karanka preferred having a striker playing in the raumdeteur role. At least Karanka knew what he wanted and there was a plan, unlike Warnock and other recent Boro managers who seemingly make it up as they go along.
 
ThatFragranceGuy said:
The rose tinted glasses with karanka never ceases to amaze me. Some good times under him but some dire games as well, no plan B, language divide between players and staff, walking out at the worst time, 85th min subs for defenders when losing 1-0 etc

we got promoted on the last day of the season, drawing 1-1 against 10 men, via goal difference despite having stuani, who went on to be one of la liga top scorers for a few seasons and Rhodes, one of the top scorers in the championship, and our top scorer had something like 7 goals that season

if we hadn't signed Ramirez, who basically reignited our season with a flurry of goals and ending up joint top scorer, we wouldn't have gone up and very nearly didn't.
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We got fewer points after Ramirez joined.
We had the best times of the decade under karanka. That's not a pair of rose tinted glasses. It's just enjoying the good times rather than being continually F***ing miserable.
 
Karanka proved many people wrong by defending his way to promotion.

What he didn't manage was to defend his way to Prem League survival and everything unravelled as the season went on.

There's no set of circumstances where his return would be anything other than disastrous.
 
Colgates_shaving_foam said:
I'm still an Aitor disciple.

Would defintiely have him back. He did the classic thing of making the pitch big when we had the ball and making it small when the opposition did.

We have not had game managament like it since (maybe Pulis a touch).
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I agree. I will be a Karanka supporter for the rest of my life.

In some ways he was (is?) flawed. However, for me, he brought the best Boro moment of my life.
 
zorro_mfc said:
I remember in the prem he once called a one nil defeat a good result and that’s when the alarm bells rang for me.
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That rings home for me bigtime Zorro with my Feb 2017 visit to London… Spurs 1 Boro 0 followed right after with Palace 1 Boro 0. Those were the last matches I saw us play live on what seemed liked a gutless traipsing back to the Championship.
 
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