That’s it. 1,603 games and 75 of them at the Boro. The man with the English football managerial record parted ways with his 18th club on Saturday.
At one minute past five, just after Boro had drawn against West Brom, a friend messaged me, ‘Neil Warnock has 10000% just said goodbye.’ On the stream in front of me was a particularly pointed scene.
Boro’s players made their way over to the 1,700 travelling fans but were joined by Warnock and his trusted lieutenants, Ronnie Jepson and Kevin Blackwell. They stood and applauded for a while, and waved when the chant of ‘Super Neil Warnock’ rang out from the away end. It was drawn out and purposeful. ‘They’re gone’, was the follow up message in the chat.
Not even 10 minutes later and it was confirmed: they had gone. Mutual consent was the word, although that can be — and indeed has been — disputed. It meant Boro were transitioning towards a new era with a new boss, again.
In the end, and with all due respect, Warnock felt like a bit roadblock towards this new turn. There were comments in the final few weeks of the summer window that indicated tension behind the scenes, especially the eyebrow raising ‘it’s nowt to do with me’ line in regards to the proposed Mitchell van Bergen transfer. Reading between the lines, it was clear that not everybody at the club was necessarily on the same page.
Soundbites born out of a similar downbeat and resigned nature became tiresome amongst many fans, including myself. Watching his press conferences went from a weekly shoe-in to a rather tedious task solely because of the various deflections, such as blaming the referees and the players not having their breakfast (I must admit I stopped watching them for a few weeks after that).
Then you have what really matters, above all: the results. Boro’s start to the season was disappointing. It was still disappointing when we recorded three wins in a row. Nothing changed for me even after the Cardiff victory and the Martín Payero euphoria that went alongside it.
Weirdly, after that, I found myself on a Championship play-off discussion livestream with the brilliant Gab Sutton and fans of top six chasing clubs. Gab is a Birmingham fan, and Birmingham were fittingly our next opponents. I said how much I hoped that game wouldn’t prove to be another false dawn in a season of full of false dawns. It turned out to be exactly that. That’s just how this season has gone.
We could never conjure up consistency under Warnock. The 10 game unbeaten run after the opening day defeat against Watford last season was impressive, but it was an outlier. The best we could do in the 12 playing months that followed were three wins in a row on two separate occasions: one at the end of 2020 when we defeated Millwall, Luton and Birmingham, and the other just recently against Peterborough, Barnsley and Cardiff. That was a problem.
In his last few games managing Boro there was at least some regularity but rather in 2–0 score lines either way as opposed to any sort of momentum building. The draw against West Brom was our first since Blackburn in August — 12 games ago. It was a head scratcher how Jekyll and Hyde Boro were from the moment Warnock stepped in to the moment he ‘mutually’ walked out. I couldn’t help but think the team were in need of a change in the dugout and fresh ideas.
I will say though, for the interest of balance, that Warnock’s tenure at the club will not go down as a hard fail in my mind. I was fully onboard with him after he steered us to Championship safety and I was generally content with how last season was going until the carrot of the play-offs was dangled in front of us and we failed to execute that final push. In the end that 10th placed finish felt disappointing and somewhat unfulfilling.
There are some great memories under Warnock. The Millwall and Reading games towards the end of the Covid-19 season stand out, not only because they were crucial games Boro needed to win, but because we played well in them. I enjoyed the Bristol City game at Ashton Gate where George Saville scored and a dogged and well oiled Boro ground out a deserved victory against a side that were flying high. Beating Aitor Karanka’s Blues 4–1 to see out 2020 was so unlike Boro it was almost worth double the points. I mean, bloody hell, we scored four.
It wasn’t all bad, but ultimately it did feel like Warnock had done his bit and ran out of ideas. It felt like the team were performing below their capabilities and that change was needed. We all know Boro have taken another exit on their roundabout of rebuilds and Warnock just wasn’t the best fit to take the club forward.
Though on one hand it could be argued that the decision to give him a further one-year contract at the end of last season was a mistake, on the other I’m glad Boro have acted now to bring in his successor who is, in my opinion, the best possible manager available to us.
Chris Wilder is the perfect blend of Championship nous, success and stability. And he didn’t need to be poached from another club. The fifth instalment of the new dawn is happening now, and it’s exciting.
Roll on the overlapping Mr McNair!
