Southgate ready to go down passing

A frenzied relegation battle is no place for a purist, which is one of the reasons why Middlesbrough’s band of travelling supporters left this ground with faces longer than the Tees on Saturday.

Gareth Southgate, the Boro manager, will win plenty of popularity contests thanks to his courteous, articulate manner and penchant for fluent football, but it is his failure to win points which has cost the north-east club so dear this season.

Not that Southgate — whose side is four points from safety with eight games to play — is about to abandon his principles.

Middlesbrough played most of the possession football at the Britannia stadium as Southgate switched to a 5-3-2 formation, but it was Stoke’s more physical and direct approach which paid dividends. However, the Boro manager said now is not a time for radical change.

“We have to play to our strengths,” he said. “We couldn’t go to Stoke and play them at their game because they are better at it than we are.

“As much as we could we wanted to pass the ball and we did and we kept it from them for long periods of time and when we did pass it we opened them up. But we didn’t show enough quality in the final third in terms of our final pass or finish.

“We are not scoring enough. We had a couple of good chances to win it and haven’t taken them. In football you have to take your chances.”

That the Stoke goal came from a Rory Delap trademark long throw was no real surprise, with centre-back Ryan Shawcross escaping his marker to glance a header into the far corner of the net with just six minutes left.

Prior to that the best two chances had fallen to striker James Beattie.

Early on the January signing forced Brad Jones into an instinctive one-handed save from a Delap throw while, after the interval, he headed over from six yards from a Liam Lawrence cross.

The win lifted Stoke out of the relegation zone and they are now three points clear of 18th-placed Newcastle.

Manager Tony Pulis paid tribute to his players’ resilience but insisted it was their relegation rivals who should be more concerned about the drop than him and his team. “The pressure is not on us, it is on the other teams who have been in the Premier League longer,” he said. “We have only just got here and no-one expected us to stay.”

STOKE (4-4-2): Sorensen 6, Wilkinson 5 (Kelly 46, 6), Shawcross 7, Abdoulaye Faye 6, Higginbotham 5, Lawrence 5 (Sidibe 83, 5), Diao 5 (Etherington 51, 5), Whelan 6, Delap 6, Beattie 6, Fuller 6.

Subs Not Used: Simonsen, Amdy Faye, Camara, Sonko.

MIDDLESBROUGH (4-4-2): Jones 7, McMahon 6 (Hoyte 80, 5), Wheater 6, Huth 7, Taylor 7 (A Johnson 86, 5), O’Neil 6, Shawky 6, Pogatetz 6, Downing 6, Tuncay 7, King 4 (Alves 55, 5).

Subs Not Used: Turnbull, Emnes, Arca, Grounds.

REFEREE: Lee Mason (Lancashire) 6: In control throughout, although a touch card-happy before half-time.

MATCH RATING: ** Grim fare for the most part, although Stoke weren’t complaining.