Alexander Murray

Left Forward - Middlesbrough
5 Aug 2043
Wednesday
Process

Marked for Alexander Murray

842 Edition

The Middlesbrough Gazette

15 Sep 2042
From our football correspondent Uneasy

Market

Paul Murphy is on his way

The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Middlesbrough is pretending he will be back in the shirt.

Squad

Leo Castledine falls out with a teammate over standards

The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.

Squad

The manager makes an example of Nicolás Zuleta

“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.

Squad

Joshua Cooper has had enough of the bench

“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Middlesbrough will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.

Squad

Charles Shaw has become a man the manager trusts

Nobody at Middlesbrough will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.

Market

The Steven Harvey question follows Middlesbrough around

Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Steven Harvey’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.

In brief