Middlesbrough gaffer Neil Warnock has seen the inside of more changing rooms than Are You Being Served?’s Mr Humphries, and the extremely well seasoned coach has worked in many of the less salubrious corners of the supposed ‘football family’. Warnock’s comments about the circumstances that his lot had to endure at the bet 365 stadium.
The Stoke Sentential quoted Warnock as describing the ‘Stoke Experience’ as a pigsty, a little Portakabin, where the showers didn’t work and the backed up smell of the toilets created fumes.
It has been alleged that Stoke laid on temporary accommodation due to the pressures of good COVID-19 practise, but it’s clear that the Boro boss hasn’t bought any of that.
Sky report that José Mourinho has a video of the conditions (presumably from Warnock) and that a compliant has already been lodged.
I take a view that the biggest casualty to the Coronavirus has been sanity.
Horrible visitors’ dressing rooms have a long, storied tradition in sport. It was considered a legitimate form of sh*t-housery even at the youth level when I was a kid. Playing away you always expected the space to be miserable; damp, cold, filthy, too small, dimly lit, with broken stuff. Comically and intentionally so.
I think it’s great stuff, even if it’s happening to us. It should make you want to go out there and absolutely embarrass them on the pitch. Getting ready in a terrible space like that always gave me a little edge, put that Lamela-esque “I’m going to make them pay for this, one way or another” in my step. Go put six or seven past them, and the ride home will be just fine, whether the showers worked or not.
Sanitary not sanity by the looks.
Yup.
As long as we dont stink the place out with our football