Good Day for Boro

Gareth Southgate may be a rookie manager but he is a very promising one and he has every right to be delighted with the outcome of Middlesbrough’s clash with Arsenal at the Riverside Stadium.

To begin with, he got the tactics right. Arsene Wenger’s boys were pressurised as soon as they had possession – and with one or two exceptions, without recourse to the kind of intimidatory approach favoured by certain other Premiership managers. As a result, the Gunners took half the game to get into some sort of rhythm and in particular the creative genius of Cesc Fabregas was substantially curtailed. Secondly, Boro had the benefit of Mike Riley’s incompetence, which meant a dubious penalty to give them the lead, a red card for Senderos and only 10 Arsenal players to contend with for some 30 minutes, and no red cards for Middlesbrough players – an arrangement which enabled Viduka to get away with elbowing Toure in the face and Arca to sweep through Fabregas with an illegal challenge from behind.

In the end, though, it was Arsenal’s 10 men who were pressing and Middlesbrough hanging on for a point, thanks to dogged defending and the benevolent influence of one of the Premiership’s weaker referees.