At the time of relegation in 2017, Boro chairman Steve Gibson took the bold step and conducted an interview on local radio. He talked about his desire to ‘smash’ the Championship that following season. This rhetoric was a far cry from the careful, but highly successful, approach that characterised the Aitor Karanka era.
After an inconsistent five months under Garry Monk, the new manager was relieved of his duties after a win at Sheffield Wednesday. His stay was short but his impact was mainly seen on the balance sheet after spending close to £50m on talent.
So after this stylistic false start, Tony Pulis arrived on Boxing Day. A veteran manager synonymous with an unattractive, direct and often primitive style of football.
For the club, it did seem somewhat of an about turn. Embracing a new more fluent style turned into something often quite turgid and pragmatic and did not fit the ‘smash the league’ narrative. Trepidation immediately set in with the potential for a return to the style of football prevalent at the tail end of the Karanka era.
Pulis’ quickly started to make his mark and within his first month at the club, he made it apparent that attacking full backs would not be required. Cyrus Christie and Fabio were quickly put out to pasture, so that the more solid figures of George Friend and Ryan Shotton could feature. To his credit, Christie had been one of Boro’s best players under Garry Monk and his sale was a real disappointment to the fans.
This was the first change initiated by Pulis and harked back to his Stoke days. There he used Rory Delap’s long throw bombs to create havoc in the penalty area. This would be the role of Shotton and Friend to increase the amount of pandemonium in the box.
Daniel Ayala became a key figure in both boxes. Despite not always being fit to play under Monk, under Pulis it would be a different matter. The Spaniard formed the heart of a mean backline, which also featured Ben Gibson and Darren Randolph.
The results in using Ayala as a set piece threat were there for all to see. After Pulis arrived, Ayala found the back of the net seven times in the 23 matches he played. That is more than Boro’s £15m striker who found the back of the net three times in a similar period.
In fairness to Britt Assombalonga, he struggled to work his way into the manager’s plans. It seemed that Pulis didn’t trust him to adapt to his system. Assombalonga had done well under Monk and was certainly the focal point of the attack. In the second half of the season, his early season performances were eclipsed by two players who certainly didn’t seem to fit the Tony Pulis mould; Patrick Bamford and Adama Traore.
Late goals meant Pulis’ reign started with two home defeats and two away wins. The losses against Aston Villa and Fulham were tough to take, especially after promising away performances in a come from behind win at Preston, and a 3-0 demolition of Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road.
After another dismal display at Cardiff, the team kicked into gear and started a fantastic run of performances that resulted in Boro reaching the heady heights of sixth. If Boro had held on to beat Sunderland in a crazy 3-3 draw then it could have been even better.
After an indifferent start to life under Pulis, one player started to shine; Patrick Bamford.
Over a period of five games and three weeks, the 2014-15 version of Bamford reappeared and propelled himself and his talent back into the minds of clubs across the league. His eight goals over those five games resulted in 13 points collected from a possible 15. The team jumped from 8th to 6th place. A position they would hold onto as the run in began.
Pulis did not have the side moulded into his image as yet, but he was happy to ride with the results he was getting. The good form and goals continued with a three game winning streak that featured Bamford at his best with a hat trick in a 3-0 demolition of Leeds United at the Riverside.
Another player who had never really let loose in a Boro shirt was Traore. Up until Pulis’ arrival, Boro fans had only ever seen glimpses of what the rapid winger was capable of achieving. Against Bolton at the Reebok Stadium, Traore put on a performance that would have Boro fans (and players) drooling with excitement. His two assists that day demonstrated that, given the right set of tactical circumstances, he would be a force to be reckoned with.
By the end of the season Traore would be known across the country (and even the world) for his incredible pace and bulldozer-like dribbling skills.
He had become a virtuoso; a player in phenomenal form, playing the best football of his life. He was free of any shackles that had been placed on him. There was nothing else that Pulis could have done. Not unleashing Traore onto the ill-prepared defenders of the division would have been criminal.
The season continued in a similar vein for Boro, with play off qualification secured and playoff opponents lined up in the form of Aston Villa, who were led by promotion expert Steve Bruce. His expensively assembled squad would prove to be a tough task for Boro to overcome.
In fact, Boro didn’t even click into gear to challenge Villa; the team were one dimensional, devoid of ideas and overly reliant on Traore. Villa, of course, forced the issue and made sure that service to Boro’s star man was limited. They sent swarms of defenders to hound him and ensured there was no way through.
A 1-0 victory for Villa at the Riverside was a perfect away playoff performance and Boro would need to play on the front foot in the second leg. Pulis had been reluctant to do this in games against rivals, but there would be no other choice at Villa Park.
As the game came around, any hope faded that Boro would take the game to Villa. Pulis’ game plan was clear; keep it tight and nick a goal. The problem with this plan was that we didn’t nick a goal.
The best chance for Boro fell to Stewart Downing in the 89th minute. One of only nine shots that Boro had on goal. This performance didn’t give fans much to be happy about going into the following season when it was likely that star players would need to be sold to balance the books.
Those departures came in the form of Gibson, Bamford and Traore.
Instantly a void in attack was created with the departure of Boro’s two best attacking performers under Pulis. Bamford and Traore who had been inconsistent in the second half of the season and left for Leeds and Wolves respectively. Boro received close to £30m for the sale of these two players, which helped to balance the books somewhat.
A harder pill to swallow was captain Gibson departing for Burnley. Never a team near the top of Boro fan’s Christmas lists, Sean Dyche’s team were upwardly mobile and looking to cement themselves as one of the mainstays in the Premier League. For Boro fans, it meant their captain was leaving for a team they had taken all the way during the promotion season of 2015-16.
Despite often reporting that funds were tight, Pulis set out to reshape the squad. He spent around £12m to bring in Aden Flint from Bristol City and Paddy McNair from Sunderland. The aim was to add goals across the pitch. In the previous season, Flint and McNair combined to score more goals than Patrick Bamford, so that was one hole filled.
These signings would also bring the side more in line with how Pulis saw the team playing. Flint is a tough, no nonsense defender who is a goal threat at corners. McNair had played in a range of positions for Sunderland, but it was as an energetic box to box midfielder where he had flourished.
A third midfielder was brought in on loan with a view to a permanent deal in George Saville from Millwall. Pulis stated that Saville could ‘become a future captain for the club’ which is high praise indeed. After arriving with a rumoured price tag of close to £8m, Boro fans hoped this was true. As with McNair though, Saville was much more of a dogged presence in midfield, with a patchy goalscoring record over his career, despite 10 goals for Millwall the previous year.
These three permanent signings totalled £20m (Saville’s transfer became permanent in the January window), which for someone who said previous managers had wasted money, certainly had not spent it on elite Championship talent.
The man Pulis pursued to replace the departed Traore was Yannick Bolaise of Crystal Palace. As one of Pulis’ ex-players it seemed like Boro were in the driving seat. Even with his exorbitant wage demands, Boro were in a position to get their man. The transfer seemed to drag on and eventually the winger signed for Aston Villa, where he lasted until the January transfer window after underwhelming performances.
Missing out on a star winger like Bolasie signalled a change in the team’s style. The sight of Traore tearing along the touchline would be gone, and however hard the club did or didn’t try, the pace in wide areas that Pulis had craved didn’t materialise. Instead, he would use wing backs and three central defenders to offer width.
Up front, the man brought in to replace Bamford in the squad was local boy Jordan Hugill. His big move to West Ham hadn’t really worked out and he was available on loan, so Boro took up the option to get him on board for the full season.
Hugill’s style of play was a sharp contrast to Bamford. He was much more of a physical presence around the pitch, rather than a more technical finisher who would get involved with build up play. He had a decent goal scoring record in the Championship with Preston, so at the time the move looked shrewd, especially as there was no transfer fee involved.
Various reports of aborted permanent and loan moves filled the back pages for a few days, before Mo Besic returned on a season-long loan deal. He would prove familiarity for the manager and the rest of the squad.
On paper, Boro still had a strong group of players and one that should be able to challenge for at least a playoff spot as they had the previous season.
The season started with a shambolic display against Millwall, which resulted in a 2-2 draw and 97th minute George Friend equaliser, Boro soon clicked into gear with four straight wins and four clean sheets. This was what we had come to expect from a Pulis side, solid at the back but limited going forward.
A visit to Marcelo Bielsa’s developing Leeds United resulted in another clean sheet and another point. Boro finished the month with four wins and two draws from the first six games. This was a fantastic return at this stage of the season and Boro had shown they were ready for a tilt at promotion.
After the international break, a 1-0 defeat to promotion bound Norwich, Boro managed to lose only one game out of twelve. This even featured a brief period where Boro reached the summit. So far so good for Pulis, who never seemed to be happy with the team’s performances, but would usually make a point about the players effort and application.
The good run of form in the early part of the season never felt like it was a team who were built to last. Often, play was disjointed and team selection sided on the negative, with Boro often fielding an isolated centre forward in Hugill as part of a 3-5-1-1 formation. Of course, other teams played similar formations, but with a more progressive outlook.
The forward positions were a real problem for Pulis because it seemed like he didn’t like any of them. The three main strikers he used all had different abilities, but never seemed to complement each other in partnerships. Pulis certainly preferred to use Hugill over Assombalonga and actually picked Braithwaite regularly despite their obvious differences.
Boro continued to pick up results, despite a sticky patch during December (as always). Keeping up with the chasing pack, Boro looked to strengthen their position in the playoff positions and push forward into the automatic places.
One of the main issues that arose during this time was the Stewart Downing contract situation. When he signed in 2015, clauses were inserted into his contract that would trigger a one year extension if he started 25 games in his final season. For Boro, and their commitment to cost cutting this was not financially viable anymore. So Downing was shunted to the bench.
As one of Pulis’ most trusted lieutenants, Downing’s position in the team was secure. Until this point, when he found himself coming into games as a substitute. To say that Pulis’ hands were tied is an understatement, but after some negotiating, Downing became a starter again.
Back on the pitch, Boro drew 1-1 with Derby on New Year’s Day and found themselves six points off the automatic playoff positions. As usual, hundreds of rumours flew around about incomings and Boro were in the market to add a forward or two.
As it turned out, only two players were brought into the club in the transfer window; Rajiv van La Parra and John Obi Mikel. Both surprising signings, especially the free transfer signature of Mikel, who, it turned out, still possessed the quality to perform in the Championship.
At the top end of the pitch, La Parra’s presence was supposed to provide the energy, pace and skill that Boro needed to press on in the league. The problem was he didn’t have the same ability as Traore and was not of the same quality as Bolasie. He would also have to replace the departed Braithwaite, who got another loan move despite featuring regularly.
Pausing on Braithwaite, he was a consistent starter under Pulis when he was fit. The problem was that Braithwaite didn’t feel like he was wanted by the manager or indeed played in his best position. The fact that their disagreements continually boiled over into the press with tit-for-tat comments didn’t help anyone. Boro’s issue was they didn’t want to grant Braithwaite a cheap move without recouping their initial outlay. Braithwaite’s issue was that he only seemed to play his best football during the summer transfer window. Needless to say he would not be missed by Pulis and certainly not remembered fondly by Boro fans.
Great results in January kept the focus away from the poor transfer haul. And after a fantastic comeback win over West Brom, Boro were in 5th place. Seven points off second place with a game in hand, the gap to the promotion spots was not insurmountable.
With any high point a low is not too far away and it arrived at Newport in an FA Cup replay live on the BBC. What followed was a dreadfully disappointing performance and a well deserved defeat. Pulis didn’t pull his punches and knew his players had been outplayed.
Back in league action, Boro bounced back with two wins and two draws from their next five games. The only blot, a defeat against an impressive Sheffield United side, who were transformed from the one Boro demolished in August.
Then came the six games that ended Boro’s playoff hopes and probably Pulis’ reign.
A run of four home games and two away would give Boro the chance to secure their playoff place or even push for automatic promotion. These games even included promotion rivals so there was a chance to gain a secure footing in the playoffs. Things didn’t quite work out that way.
All promoted teams need one feature that sets them apart; fantastic individual talent, a collective better than the sum of its parts or a well oiled scoring machine. Boro did not seem to have one of these elite elements anywhere on the pitch. It certainly contributed to their slow tumble down the league in the second half of the season.
The first of the six game run was against Brentford. It ended with Boro receiving five yellow cards and their opponents scoring two goals in a matter of minutes to cancel out Ashley Fletcher’s opener and eventually win the game. Boro were completely dominated by a possession driven team, despite recording 19 shots on goal.
Up next were Preston and a similar story. Boro were a goal ahead when Ayala was sent off on the hour mark, followed quickly by a Preston equaliser who then went on to win the game. The statistics were almost identical to that of the Brentford game and one of the reasons for fans' constant frustration.
The knives were being sharpened as a real test approached; away to Aston Villa who were surging towards the playoffs after swapping Steve Bruce for lifelong Villain Dean Smith.
Despite losing 3-0 as they had in the reverse fixture, Boro remained in the playoff places with a game in hand. It seemed that the side was only one result or one performance from turning it around, but in reality that moment was far away.
Pulis continued to praise the application, effort and endeavour of his players, but results didn’t change. Matters were not helped by missed chances in these games and performances were not all bad. At this stage of the season though, results are what matters most and it proved to derail Boro’s season.
Three more defeats, including two at home, saw Boro move out of the playoff places at a crucial time in the season. They had also managed to increase the gap to the promotion spots from nine points to 19 in the space of only six games.
Now four points outside the playoff places with no games in hand remaining, Boro would have to win all their remaining fixtures and hope teams above them slipped up.
Incredibly, Boro won their next three games without conceding a goal and the playoffs seemed like a real possibility again. At this point, Pulis acknowledged that the performances were still not great, but the results had returned. The amount of injuries continued to increase with makeshift lineups being utilised for one final push for the top six.
The joy was short-lived. Boro were turned over at Forest, losing 3-0 almost the final nail in the coffin.
Pulis’ claimed after the game he did all he could by putting more attacking players on the pitch. But in reality his hand was forced by the injury list and two of the more attacking players in Howson and Saville were fielded as wing backs. The tactical approach remained the same and the paltry three shots on goal said it all.
The outside chance of the playoffs disappeared despite winning the final two games. Boro had spent almost eight months in the top six, so to finish seventh was a hammer blow.
As the season came to a close, Pulis announced that the seventh place finish was a bigger achievement than the previous season considering the talent he had lost. He even made reference to other teams who spent close to £50 million and finished below Boro; a dig at his former club Stoke. If Pulis had looked closer to the club’s spending £20m for a seventh placed finish does not present a great return.
Pulis didn’t use his transfer fund wisely whether they were his own choices or signings by committee. It was telling that the two teams promoted automatically spent a total of £22m combined and both featured forward thinking managers who tried to innovate their team’s style of play. A far cry from what Boro had done on and off the pitch.
The outdated, grind it out approach has been proved to work in the Championship at times, Boro have even proved this, but a coherent attacking system also needs to be in place for the results to follow.
For all the talk of Boro’s defensive steel, second placed Sheffield United matched Boro’s goal against total of 41 but managed to score 29 more goals. They even utilised a back three and wing backs as their predominant system.
In the stands, fans never really took to Pulis partly due to his reputation, but mostly due to the product put out on the pitch. To his credit, he did try to establish a connection with the fans through press conferences, appealing to the hard working and down to earth nature of the people in the area.
On reflection, as the current season has progressed, it seems that Pulis wrung out every last drop from the players and pushed them towards the top end of the table. This has been further highlighted by the poor form and lack of tactical organisation displayed this season under Jonathan Woodgate.
Tony Pulis will not get the same vitriolic treatment as other recent Boro managers; Gordon Strachan was much less successful, Pulis was ultimately more successful than Mowbray in terms of final league positions and although his style was defence-first like Aitor Karanka, the outcomes couldn’t be more different. Karanka’s side had an air of invincibility whereas Pulis’ team had an air of what do we do next?
Since his departure the club are on a much more secure financial footing, but the football ultimately suffered and Boro are in another cycle of rebuild and re-establish. It remains to be seen what Pulis’ legacy is at the club, but the 18 months under his guidance had some high points, but will forever be tainted by unfulfilled potential courtesy of an outdated style of football.