Fly Me To The Moon column: Neil Warnock is giving Middlesbrough fans many reasons to be thankful after Nottingham Forest win

Reasons To Be Thankful

It was an awful night. Dark, icy cold and the sleety rain was absolutely hammering down leaving you drenched and freezing the moment you left the sanctuary of your car.

It was a case of hood up, head down and move as quickly as possible towards the distant glow of the floodlights and hope the City Ground had not become part of the River Trent and been washed away.

That was so last season and last winter of course. Back in the days when we could battle 130 miles south down the M1 through midweek traffic and be thankful for it!

Not this campaign though. Although the weather did its best to make it a deja vu evening, out on the pitch Neil Warnock's Boro were giving us an evening to remember.

As the rain swept down the team in blue and black were sweeping away Nottingham Forest's unbeaten run and putting a halt to Chris Hughton's revival.

It is what Neil Warnock does. Every time you have doubts his team comes bounding back and puts some pleasure back into these presently relentlessly challenging times.

Aitor Karanka's Birmingham performed really well against us at the weekend with old boy George Friend rolling back the years to be instrumental in that win. Yet we can now well see that the after-effects of Covid and lack of training had also taken its toll.

At Forest it was another player entering the veteran stage in Jonny Howson that produced a vintage performance. Forest's expert analyst Steve Hodge, an England World Cup midfielder no less, had no hesitation in applauding the contribution of Howson as “head and shoulders above everyone else on the pitch.”

Howson's assist was gratefully snapped up by Britt Assombalonga. The Boro captain has often struggled on his return to his old club but this week he was back to his best and only the width of the goalpost and an extraordinarily unlucky rebound off keeper Brice Samba prevented his header making it a Britt brace.

This midweek I was hunkered up in front of my laptop watching the Boro playing. I was inside insulated from the torrential rain turning to freezing snow.

Moreover, I didn't have to share the misfortune of all those that queued at the one hot food counter in the City Ground away end. Hoping against hope that a steaming hot pie would help them thaw after running the gauntlet of the icy rain, only to follow the pointing finger of the pedantic staff, “Card Sales Only.”

Our money wasn't good enough for Forest last season. I probably have still got money left in my pocket from that night, so little do we use cash these days.

Yes, times have changed but Neil Warnock is giving us many reasons to be thankful these days. Keep it up against Mogga now on Saturday. Come On Boro and UP THE BORO.

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