What is Steve Gibson’s biggest mistake?

What is Steve Gibson’s biggest mistake


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At the time it felt unfathomable that we could attract someone of Robbo’s ilk and stature. It felt ambitious and exciting. We even beat Wolves for his signature.

McClaren, number 2 for Sir Alex at Man United. Huge regard within the game as a top coach.

Karanka, number 2 to Jose at Real Madrid. Managed Spain youth teams. Again, well respected.

You’re seriously comparing those to Southgate and more importantly to Jonathon PowerPoint Village Woodgate? At least Southgate has intelligence and is articulate. Nobody in their right mind would hire Mr PowerPoint.
Fair point and I said that some were a success and some weren't and that the successful ones had a pedigree.
However I do admire Gibson for having the guts to back people who he must have faith in, after all it is his money that he gambles with.
It would be great for it to come off, but for the fans disappointing when it doesnt. We dont have the finances to employ the best or even second best so we have to take some gambles. However delighted that we now have Warnock.
 
I went with Southgate. It was a time when Boro's stock had probably not been as high. It was the chance to go for a really top manager but he went for the captain instead.

It was a terrible decision based on words from Venables (who he tried to get) and ridiculous belief at the time that Boro are somehow unique as a club.

Special mention to his bizarre comments on Stockton. How and why he said something so daft is beyond me!
 
ridiculous belief at the time that Boro are somehow unique as a club.
Sadly I think this mentality is still alive and well at the club just look at our insane policy of not appointing managers already in a job.

because we have a higher moral compass apparently
 
Sadly I think this mentality is still alive and well at the club just look at our insane policy of not appointing managers already in a job.

because we have a higher moral compass apparently

I seem to remember Rob mentioned Gibson talking to him after the Southgate appointment. Gibson said he believed Boro were a special club. Absolute rubbish of course.
 
Increasing the size of the Riverside (filling in corners) thus giving in to popular demand, and ignoring historical data. In recent years it has diluted the atmosphere at matches, and arguably resulted in lost ticket sales.
 
The thing that we all have to remember: we owe all the good times - juninho, riverside, the fantastic robbo years; cup finals- to gibbo
He is a boro lad and has bank rolled our club for decades and took us to the UEFA Cup Final
He pushed us into the big time with the new ground when the ayresome attendances were about 7000
He is a victim of his own success, sometimes.
But he did drop a b0ll0ck giving southgate the job
 
The decision not to play for Blackburn surely came from our manager?

Southgate? More like Summer 2008 very poor recruitment.. everyone involved.

January 2017 same as the above.

Teesside Tory - the labour party is full of tories.. you can hardly blame gibbo for that. (it is disappointing tho)

Stockton Mackems - a bit daft but boro should be the fist club to support for the folks of Teesside

Jonathan Woodgate - saved a bit of money.. turned out ok in the end. nail biting league survival finish rather than a boring midtable finish


Still six mistakes.. not bad going.

How have Sunderland been getting on during all of this? and Newcastle? what have they been up to?

I feel like we're on the up again.. plenty of fans worse off. How many teams have won silverwear in the past 25 years? How many cup finals? How many in Europe?

What about teams like Portsmouth, Bolton, Blackpool & Wigan?

Sure we want to be the next Leicester, we want to be up their with Leeds, Palace, Wolves, Newcastle, Burnley, Brighton, Fulham, West Brown & Sheff United... I don't think we're THAT far off.
 
The biggest mistake for me, and very easy in hindsight, was ditching Southgate. Tbf I'm not his biggest fan now, but we should deffo have supported him til the end of that season. Odd that Gibbo didn't really
 
Stockton Mackems - a bit daft but boro should be the fist club to support for the folks of Teesside
I think you underestimate how deep many including me took that I have mates now st holders that still are annoyed by it.
He’s never apologised for it either.

the irony being that under robbo the entire team seemed to be based in either norton or ingleby, both of which are stockton
 
Not at all it was not ditching him during the awful death crawl to relegation in the prem.
Hmm (and I'm thinking..) nope. I disagree. He was dealt a sht hand and did OK in the circumstances.
However one of the lowest blows, as a Boro supporter I've ever had was the quarter FA Cup loss. That was hard. Could have won it that year
 
did OK in the circumstances.
We were relegated with a wimper a spineless side with the lowest goals per game average in the uk at the time. It was dreadful

judge me on my team he said and we did should have been sacked after the cardiff capitulation.
 
Losing that QF was heart breaking the way it happened. With every big club getting knocked out the day before.

But in Southgates defence nobody else has won the FA cup for boro either.

We did indeed go down with a whimper. Don't disagree there. But as I said, we've been relegated before. And other than our 3 points injustice (and Wigan last year), teams generally do get relegated with a whimper 🤷‍♂️ otherwise they wouldn't be getting relegated.

First time scoring more than 3 in a game is a funny criticism. Especially after some of the seasons since. I don't think we scored more than 3 in any games in Karanka's promotion season.
 
it was deffo southgate, we needed a top drawer experienced manager to develop the team and make it premier league stalwarts every season.... and yes the Cardiff QF was the worst Boro performance ever given the games standing.... on the train back from Darlo ( was on route to Sons house Sheffield) loads Cardiff fans most saying how shocking we were ....
 
In a way, looking back the Woodgate appointment doesn't seem like such a big a mistake now, as Gibson rectified the mistake by sacking him before it was too late.

I think appointing Monk and giving him £50m to spend definitely ranks up there as one of his biggest mistakes, especially when you consider we didn't need to spend anywhere near that amount. We already had a strong squad for the Championship, so just needed to appoint an experienced manager and we'd have gone up.
 
Hmm (and I'm thinking..) nope. I disagree. He was dealt a sht hand and did OK in the circumstances.
However one of the lowest blows, as a Boro supporter I've ever had was the quarter FA Cup loss. That was hard. Could have won it that year

Peter Wittingham (rip) tore us to shreds.
 
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