Instead, We Appointed a Negligent School Prefect

Just as the end of an enduring relationship leaves many wonderful memories, so too,alas, does it summon to the fore innumerable regrets: words left unspoken;things you wish you did differently; Sliding Doors moments which leave you eternally wondering where fate might have taken you. Aitor Karanka - wonderful,intractable, exasperating Aitor Karanka – leaving Middlesbrough is no exception. Did turning up to the playoff final late halt our progress by twelvemonths? Was his relationship with certain members of the squad irreconcilable following the pre-Charlton walkout? Why deliberately seek out conflict with supporters whose hearts ached following the pivotal defeat to West Ham?Tantalising questions forever to linger unanswered.

An opening-day 2-0 defeat of Birmingham City at a sun-drenched Riverside Stadium stands out as the greatest missed opportunity of Karanka’s era of all. Not for the gorgeous interplay between Lee Tomlin and Kike which suggested a season of adventure, aesthetic pleasure and goals. Not even for the rare bliss of watching the Boro triumph in the mid-summer sun. No. Rather, the most powerful regret of missing that wonderful afternoon’s football – a performance which fizzed and teased with promise – owes to Aitor stepping to the edge of his technical area, jutting out an insouciant shoe, and bringing a wayward clearance under his command. Football offers few finer treats than the gaffer proving he ‘still has it’. Karanka, with a nonchalance previously known only to romantic leads in subtitled cinema, had irrefutably proven that the gift remained.

Certain aficionados of the genre delight in the misfortune of others. They scoff and guffaw gleefully at a tracksuit-donning dunderhead taking the ball in the bonce. These people are the fools who cheer when a waiter drops a plate at the restaurant, or would have voted for ‘Man Gets Hit By Football in the Groin’ at the Springfield Movie Awards. On a superficial level, their tastes are not too dissimilar to ours. Unfortunately, they lack a taste for life’s finer things.They fail to appreciate sophistication and nuance in a way that we, the enlightened, can.

The trajectory for a wonderful 2014/15 season had been set. Paul Tisdale, Exeter’s sartorially conscious manager, magnificently justified stepping into the outer skeleton of a fine English gentleman to direct his modest team each Saturday afternoon as ‘being one-nil up before you start’. In one exquisite motion, Aitor rolled back the years and gave the Boro a ten-point head-start atop theChampionship. The effect of words is fleeting. Tactical discourse is too subjective. People lead by glorious action.

The spell cast in that instant did not break until the dawn of 2017. Perhaps too many of the team that bore witness to the feat of control – indeed, heard the delightful ‘tuc’ as the hurtling sphere was brought to a halt – were sold too quickly, their replacements simply unaware of his act of delicate precision.

Steve Agnew, despite honing, crafting and polishing the most notable egg in football,does not strike me as the kind of man equipped to trap an errant football. His tracksuit is too tight, his trainers preposterously large, the aesthetic effect too ‘Good Football Man’ to pass the test. I cringe as I see his eyes track the ball’s movement, as he raises an unsteady right leg to meet it. I see a surface glistening with half-time dew, and soles worn underfoot. I wince at the inevitable slip. I cannot close my ears to the derisive crowd, nor help but wonder at what a horrible harbinger for our club’s future the scene evokes.

When Steve Gibson eventually appoints Aitor’s successor, I hope the candidate has a penchant for playing breathlessly quick, expansive, tacking football. I hope his suits are chic and his shoes the stuff of Milanese catwalks. Perhaps he’ll nurse a nice cognac or brandy from the touchline as he gives his instructions.Most of all, though, he’ll carry the air of a man who will stand up to football’s sternest test: trapping the ball, as – delicately, economically,beautifully - as it flies into touch. The very fate of the club rests on it.