Plenty to ponder

It might be only seven months since Middlesbrough were playing in the Premier League alongside their opponents, but much has changed at the two clubs in the last year.

While Middlesbrough have found themselves struggling to come to terms with the cost of relegation to the Championship, City have found themselves given a complete transformation courtesy of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s estimated £555bn fortune.

In the summer alone Mark Hughes, before he was sacked last month, invested £115m on six new major signings, while Strachan’s predecessor at the Riverside, Gareth Southgate, only spent £500,000 on three new recruits.

Southgate also had to offload around £30m of his best talent, a figure which Mancini is likely to be using on just one player at some stage this month as he looks to turn City into a top four side.

Strachan, however, is not concerned and he certainly doesn’t feel City should be criticised for paying for glory.

“Sometimes a club can stumble onto money. Look at Chelsea, they were nearly extinct but then Roman Abramovich takes over,” said Strachan. “You can be fortunate and pick up someone with a lot of cash.

“But City have always been a decent club. Always a good club. United have always had money over the years and noone complained. Arsenal the same. Liverpool always had more money than the others.

These teams are near the top because they have spent the most. It is just that someone else has got the money now. It all seems to get shared about.

“It doesn’t matter how they get the money. These clubs have had money for ages while the other clubs have had to operate beneath them with lesser players. But now Man City and Chelsea have the money, they are able to buy players and compete.

“You have to deal with it.

Deal with it. It’s like when I came up against Manchester United and it was ‘me versus Alex Ferguson.’ It’s a bit unfair that, like earlier in the season it was Tony Mowbray versus Arsene Wenger. It’s like he has a machine gun and you have a water pistol. Deal with it, it can happen.”

At the age of 52 the Middlesbrough manager has certainly experienced enough in football to be unconcerned by developments at Eastlands in the last two weeks.

While he might have a view on whether City were wrong to sack his former Manchester United team-mate Mark Hughes, he preferred to keep his thoughts on the subject to himself. “It has nothing to do me,” was his response.

But does he relish facing former Inter Milan boss Mancini? “I am taking my team against his team and there is a lot made about systems, but it all boils down to players,” said Strachan.

“There is a lot said about coaches yet I would feel the same about facing Mark Hughes’ City as I do facing Roberto’s, with all due respect because both have proved themselves in the management game.

“I don’t know what he has been saying since he arrived, honestly, but how do you cope with the pressure? You learn to deal with it as you get older.

It’s hard to deal with high pressure jobs when you are a young manager. But you learn how to deal with it the longer you stay in the game – and I have had 12 or 13 years good practice.”

With the injury problems Strachan has – his only fit striker with experience is Marcus Bent – it would seem highly unlikely that Middlesbrough can inflict defeat on a City team in with every chance of playing in the Champions League next season.

“They are flying. I came back from the Barnsley game thinking we had done well but still got beat, but then you watch the telly and think ‘yeah this will be interesting’,”

said Strachan, having watched City defeat Wolves 3- 0 later that night.

“Then you turn it off after an hour because you know how they are going to play.

They have fantastic wide players, midfield is solid, I don’t know how much it cost to put their defence together. And you say ‘where are the weaknesses?’ You just have to get the best out of your players and see what happens on the day.”

Strachan was part of the Manchester United team that won the FA Cup in 1985 and he still cherishes the winner’s medal he picked up.

But just reaching the fourth round would do him this season, knowing that defeating Mancini’s City could do wonders for Middlesbrough’s confidence in their attempts to revive a season of frustration in the Championship.

“It could have a negative effect on us and that’s why the game is so important,” he said.

“You have to try to put the best performance on so it sets you up well for the second half of the season and the New Year. I am looking to rectify what has been a bad year for Middlesbrough and we must make 2010 a good year.

“If we play some of the controlled football we played at Barnsley in the first half that will help us to be a threat.

They will have more of the ball, good pace and they can play the ball about.

“But there are ways for us to score goals. I don’t want to talk about City. Enough people to do that, I’d rather talk about us.”