Yer Joking Aren't Ya?: The Full Story of Middlesbrough's Unforgettable 1996/97 Season

By Tom Flight

The bizarre and unforgettable story behind Middlesbrough's epic 1996/97 season when a huge cash injection brought world-class stars to the North-East club. They reached two cup finals and played breathtaking football, but the egos in the team caused their season to spiral out of control. It's one of the craziest stories in Premier League history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Apr 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781785316944

Book preview

Vickers

Introduction

It all started at a dinner one night. It was the early summer of 1994. Steve Gibson, the new chairman of Middlesbrough Football Club, was trying to close the deal on his first managerial appointment. The club he had taken over was a mid-table side in the First Division. Attendances were slipping, and there was a general malaise within the club. But behind the scenes Gibson was plotting a revolution. And he knew for a revolution to ignite he needed a spark. He believed that spark was Bryan Robson.

‘Robbo’, ‘Captain Marvel’, ‘Captain Courageous’. Captain of Manchester United and England. As a player he personified the way English football was supposed to be played. A leader who played the game like his life depended on it. The word ‘legend’ is thrown around too much in football, but Robson was a true legend of the game in every sense.

In 1994 he had finally called time on a stellar career at Old Trafford after helping Alex Ferguson’s side to their first league and cup double. He was looking for a path into management, and Steve Gibson was adamant that his future lay in Teesside.

Robson wasn’t keen.

‘At first I thought, Middlesbrough … I’m not so sure. I knew quite a bit about Middlesbrough from when I was a kid as a Newcastle supporter and at first it didn’t really appeal to me,’ Robson recalls in the book Doom to Boom by Dave Allan and Adrian Bevington.

But what Robson didn’t realise was the Middlesbrough that he knew, the Middlesbrough everyone knew, was soon to be a thing of the past. Everything you thought you knew about the club Gibson was ripping up and starting anew. The 90-year-old Ayresome Park stadium was coming down, and on the old docks, once the centre of a thriving shipyard when Middlesbrough was an industrial powerhouse, Gibson planned to erect a state-of-the-art, world-class stadium. Gibson was an astute businessman with a vision. He could see the way the football landscape in the country was unfolding. The FA were cleaning up hooliganism. The Taylor Report was making the sport a safer spectator experience. The Premier League project in 1992 had been groundbreaking and the TV companies would be cut-throat in pursuit of future deals. The game of football in England was on the cusp of being flooded with money. And Gibson wanted to be at the forefront of it all.

Robson was in talks about taking over the manager positions at Coventry and Wolves, while he was also being courted by his old boss at United, Ron Atkinson, to be his assistant at Aston Villa. He decided to meet with Gibson out of politeness more than anything, but after a couple of hours with him he found the young businessman’s ambition infectious. ‘I was pleasantly surprised with the way the chairman wanted to go,’ Robson said about the meeting. Gibson told him to sleep on it, and then he set up a second meeting, with the wives included.

After about half an hour, before dinner had even been served, Robson reached across the table with his hand and said ‘You’ve got a deal’. Champagne was ordered.

‘I said, Excuse me, before going outside the room where I screamed the place down with joy!’ Gibson recalled about the moment Robson joined.

The Cellnet Riverside Stadium was erected in under a year. It felt like manifest destiny that the club should play their first game at their new home in the promised land of the Premier League. And as the stadium was constructed, the rookie manager guided the club to first place in the First Division. Boro played an emotional final game at Ayresome Park, their home for 92 years, beating Luton 2-1, before clinching promotion on the final day of the season against Tranmere. Middlesbrough were in the Premier League.

The 1995/96 season was monumental for Middlesbrough. Boro smashed their transfer record, signing young England international Nick Barmby. Then in November they shocked the world by signing the Brazilian superstar Juninho. Middlesbrough started well, but had bad luck with injuries, which resulted in a terrible post-Christmas slump. But they finished a very respectable 12th.

People didn’t care too much about league position. The 1995/96 season felt like a prequel. The giant leaps the club had made in just two years since Gibson took over as chairman had been astonishing, but everybody knew that the scales of Gibson’s ambitions stretched even further. But no one was prepared for what Gibson and Robson pulled off that summer.

I was on a family holiday in Lake Garda when I found out Middlesbrough had signed Fabrizio Ravanelli. I was nine years old and had been obsessed with football for about a year. My dad joined the line around the stadium to get a season ticket when the news about Juninho broke. That first season at the Riverside was everything I knew about football. I loved football history but 1993 felt as foreign as 1973. 1996 featured the first FA Cup Final I can remember, the first Champions League Final I sat and watched in full, and the first time I truly recall seeing a team lift the Premier League trophy (it helped that Manchester United did it at the Riverside on the final day of the season). And then there was all the drama of the sun-soaked football oasis that was Euro 96. ‘Football’s Coming Home’ was played surely 100 times on my Walkman during the drive to northern Italy.

On the campsite the man in the tent next to ours was reading the Gazzetta dello Sport. I can’t remember for sure, but I imagine I was wearing my Boro shirt, probably dribbling a ball around the tent. He came over and showed the front page to my dad. ‘You seen this?’ I came over to look. On the front page was a picture of Ravanelli. I obviously couldn’t read Italian, but the word Middlesbrough was there in the headline.

I’m sure it’s very easy to counter this argument, but at that moment, it felt like Middlesbrough had just signed the best striker in the world. I had watched the Champions League Final between Juventus and Ajax in Rome, where I’d seen him score. I watched James Richardson every Saturday morning on Gazzetta Football Italia. He seemed a vintage Italian player. A living icon. The idea that he was going to play for Middlesbrough seemed unbelievable.

But at the same time it was extremely believable. Gibson’s vision seemed to have no limit. There didn’t seem to be a deal Robson couldn’t close. The optimism that breathed through the club, through the whole town, that summer will never be felt again, because it was devoid of any cynicism. Trust in Gibson and Robson was absolute. Nobody knew where the club was going; nobody really knew where English football was going. But it was only going up.

Or so it seemed. Revolution is never smooth.

What followed was one of the strangest seasons in English football history. It has to be said there was a lot, A LOT, of dreadful games of football. It is possible to read this season as one long-drawn-out tragedy. But, as this book hopefully recounts, it was so much more than that. The characters involved were some of the most colourful the Premier League has seen. For those that took part, and those that witnessed the emotional rollercoaster, it was a time they would never forget.

This book tells the story of this extraordinary season month-by-month. I’ve also chosen ten games (one from each month of the season) to focus on in closer detail. Limiting to just ten games was a challenge as there were so many epic encounters throughout the campaign. I was lucky enough to be in the stands for many of them. But when I couldn’t get to a match I listened to Century Radio. Listening to the genius of the late Alistair Brownlee, I and so many Boro fans would become enrapt as his voice brought all the drama into our homes. Whenever I hear his commentary today, it takes me back to this season when nothing in the world mattered except the Boro result.

Chapter 1

Middlesbrough v Liverpool

Saturday, 17 August 1996

Riverside Stadium

Attendance: 30,039

He was instantly recognisable the moment he strolled out of the players’ tunnel on to the turf of the Riverside Stadium. The shock of silver hair glinted in the scorching August sun, the loose-fitting red shirt sagged untucked, the collar turned up. The name commentators relished saying. A month or two ago the transfer sounded like a joke. There he was in the flesh. One of the elite strikers on the planet was playing for Middlesbrough Football Club.

Less than three months earlier Fabrizio Ravanelli was playing for Juventus in the Stadio Olimpico in the Champions League Final. On 13 minutes, the man known in Italy as Penne Bianca (‘White Feather’) latched on to the ball after a defensive mix-up between Edwin van der Sar and Frank de Boer. Ravanelli spun around to side-foot the ball from an acute angle over the line for the opening goal. Ravanelli wheeled away in ecstasy, racing down the touchline with his arms outstretched, howling rapturously to the heavens. His team-mates chased after him, but just before they caught him, he delivered his trademark celebration: pulling his shirt over his head. Juventus would go on to win the match on penalties and Ravanelli’s team-mate and captain Gianluca Vialli hoisted the European Cup. It remains the last time the Bianconeri lifted the trophy. It was also the last game the pair would play for the club.

English football fans were familiar with Ravanelli. For those who didn’t have a Sky subscription many people’s weekly dose of live football came on Channel 4’s Football Italia, along with the Gazzetta show on Saturday mornings. Serie A had gained an illustrious reputation and Ravanelli was one of the true stars in the league.

He was a gilt-edged striker in a crowded field in Serie A. He had been Juve’s top scorer the previous season, and helped the side win a domestic double in 1994/95, before the Champions League win in 1996. Juventus, however, were notorious for their lack of sentimentality, always happy to sell their assets for new available models. In the summer of 1996 they signed Alen Bokšić and Christian Vieri. Overloaded with strikers, Juventus looked to make a hefty profit on Ravanelli while he was at the peak of his powers.

Ravanelli was initially distraught. ‘I don’t want to go,’ he said in a statement. ‘I’ve always been a Juventus fan and I wish I could have signed a contract for life but that’s the way it goes.’ Juventus had interest, but there was one club who were unrelenting in their endeavour to sign the striker.

It was an immense effort from Middlesbrough. Neither Ravanelli, nor his agent, had heard of Middlesbrough, but they had heard of Bryan Robson. The Middlesbrough manager had an international reputation which helped spearhead the club’s ambitions. Robson and the club’s chief executive Keith Lamb made two trips to Turin during the summer to show that they were serious. Eventually a deal of £7m was agreed and contract talks began. The northeast of England wasn’t of immediate appeal to the striker. His team-mate Gianluca Vialli had recently signed for Chelsea on a Bosman free transfer, meaning that the Pensioners were able to offer inflated wages to offset the lack of a transfer fee. Ravanelli’s agent reportedly told the club that Middlesbrough would at least have to pay his client the same as Vialli if they were remotely interested. Ravanelli probably thought this demand was so outrageous that it would scare away this upstart club he’d never heard of so he could concentrate on offers from more established sides. They were left speechless when the club’s chairman Steve Gibson green-lit an offer of £42,000 a week. Middlesbrough were indeed a club that needed to be taken seriously.

‘To sell the club to Ravanelli, I took over photos of the new stadium, along with plans for the extension work and the new training ground. I’d visited a lot of training facilities on my scouting trips around Europe and made sure our training would lack for nothing,’ Robson wrote in his autobiography Robbo. ‘When I showed him the plans and pictures, and told him the place was packed out every week, he was impressed.’

Almost ten years ago to the day Middlesbrough had been relegated to the third tier of the Football League. Finances were in such dire straits that a local TV news station announced the death of the club. The club’s youngest board member, local businessman Steve Gibson, had stepped up to bring together a consortium that saved Boro. Now chairman Gibson had signed one of the best goalscorers in Europe.

On 5 July reports circulated the British press that the signing had been agreed. ‘We have been watching him for a long time and his quality is clear to see. He is powerful and a great goalscorer but he has a strong overall game, too. I have set him the challenge of helping Middlesbrough win our first major trophy,’ Robson was quoted as saying.

Ravanelli, who had been in England as part of Italy’s Euro 96 campaign, went on holiday to mentally prepare for his new life in the north-east of England. He pledged his commitment in a statement. ‘I’m looking forward to joining Middlesbrough FC and I can assure the supporters that I will give the club 110 per cent commitment in an effort to win trophies.’

Middlesbrough had been eager to sign a statement striker. Newspaper reports linked them with Jürgen Klinsmann, Dion Dublin, Gabriel Batistuta and Gianluca Vialli. But Steve Gibson was adamant they had succeeded in signing the target at the top of their list. ‘Ravanelli was always our first-choice striker, though Bryan shortlisted others who would fit the bill,’ Gibson said. ‘When we finally got Juventus to quote a figure, it was £12m. We had no intention of paying that sort of money but the very fact they quoted a fee told us they would sell if we could agree on a price. Bryan persevered and his efforts finally paid off when we managed to agree a fee of £7m. We were delighted with that.’

At the start of the summer Middlesbrough had convinced Brazilian midfielder Emerson to trade Champions League football with Porto for the project on Teesside for £4m. Along with the signings of Juninho and Nick Barmby the previous year, this took Boro’s spending to over £20m. In the current football climate this is loose change for a Premier League club, but at the time it was staggering, particularly for a club of Boro’s stature.

English football was going through a radical change. The Bianconeri’s triumph in Rome had been a symbol of Serie A’s dominance in Europe. But England had signalled they were now operating at the money-burning levels of Serie A.