At last something goes right this week
Well, that was all very satisfactory. It wasn't our best performance of the season, or even in Europe, but it was, with the aid of some comedy finishing from the Partizan forwards, enough to get the job done in a moderate degree of comfort.
I feared a repeat of the missed opportunity to win the group at Villarreal in the third game when I was crossing the Riverside car park and heard the much-loathed Me Mark Page announcing the team (though I hardly needed to be as close as 40 yards from the stadium, as I could probably have heard his irksome bellow had I stayed home in Reading). George Boateng's absence through injury already left a lack of physical presence in the middle of the park which worried me after the freedom the feeble Manchester City enjoyed last Monday night when George was suspended, so learning that both Viduka and Hasselbaink were rested in favour of Nemeth and the woefully ineffectual Job cannot have pleased any Boro fan, least of all any of the 4000+ of us who made the trip to Spain three weeks ago to see us outplayed by a Villarreal side we could have beaten at full strength.
However, I need not have worried and McClaren's decision was fully vindicated. We might have done better if the referee had sent off the Partizan forward Boya for his disgraceful elbow in the face of Colin Cooper like he should done. Instead Boya merely saw a yellow card and stayed on for the rest of the match to annoy the crowd with his presence and the defence with his height and speed. Anyway, the job was done and we won the group, which means Friday's draw for the round of 32 gives us one of the seven third-placed teams with home advantage in the second leg.
Personally I'd love to get one of the German teams. Alemania Aachen would be the easiest, being a second division team, but if Basel manage to beat Feyenoord by two clear goals, we could get Schalke 04, which would be fantastic. The Arena Auf Schalke is a massive dome stadium which holds 60,000 and is always full. We'd get loads of tickets and Schalke would bring a big contigent to the Riverside. And it would be very convenient for me. I could fly from Heathrow to Düsselfdorf and stay with Kay in Duisburg. The train is only about 20 minutes to Gelsenkirchen. Now there's a prospect to drool over. Won't happen, of course. With our luck we'll get Besiktas and have to go to Istanbul, always a welcoming place for the English fan. Or, God forbid, Zenit St. Petersburg. That'll be lovely in the middle of February, based on the -18˚C it was when I was in Leningrad (as it was then) in December 1987. I await the draw with great eagerness!
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