, Former-Middlesbrough boss speaks openly about his sacking

Former-Middlesbrough boss speaks openly about his sacking

Speaking to Jamie Carragher’s The Greatest Game podcast, former-Middlesbrough Head Coach Jonathan Woodgate spoke out about his recent sacking.

He was ultimately replaced by veteran Neil Warnock and Middlesbrough have seen their fortunes change from potential relegation candidates to Play-Off chasers.

When asked about his sacking, Jonathan Woodgate gave an in-depth response.

“It’s not nice. It’s difficult when you’re managing your hometown club,” he said.

“You have a lot of responsibility to take on, and then when you get the sack after a short period of time it’s not a nice feeling.

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He was also quizzed on whether he was given enough time in the hot seat at Middlesbrough, to which Woodgate felt he didn’t get a ‘full backing’.

“It happens,” he said. “The chairman was really good to me. But you need the full backing.

“When I got the job we lost six players like John Obi Mikel, Jordan Hugill, [Stewart] Downing, [Darren] Randolph, [Aden] Flint, and Martin Braithwaite went too.

“You need to replace those players but we didn’t do that. The club were in a difficult situation.”

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In terms of football philosophy, Woodgate said in his initial unveiling press conference that his Middlesbrough side were going to playing passing football with intensity and pressing, but fans were left scratching their heads as they were lowest scorers in the division and flirting with relegation.

“I wanted to play out from the back. But we played against Salford away in a pre-season friendly and I realised we just couldn’t do it because we didn’t have the players to do it.

“So I came in at half-time and blamed the pitch and the ball, rather than the players. But we didn’t have the players to do it in the way I wanted to do it and so we had to change.

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“You’ve got to try and play to the strength of the players and those players weren’t able to play out from the back for me. I had to move on straight away.

“But I wanted to change the way we played but it was going to have to be a progressive thing and you need the time to do it.

“I’m not going to change the style of a player in six months. It isn’t going to happen. You need time.”

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