ENGLISH FA CUP SEMI-FINALS: Middlesbrough are 6 to 1 against in a two-horse race tomorrow. That is a generous amount of disdain. But given that they are playing Arsenal, have Paul Ince suspended, Benito Carbone cup-tied and Noel Whelan freshly injured, perhaps it is not surprising.
Arsenal, moreover, beat Middlesbrough so often - twice this season already - that their fans have adopted Boro's theme tune Pigbag. Ironically, of course.
And yet Middlesbrough are not without hope, or lucky omens, the staple of the FA Cup. One, for example, is that tomorrow is the first anniversary of their first win at Highbury since 1939. The score was 3-0 and meant that Manchester United were league champions again last season.
Arsenal did not help themselves that day, Edu and Silvinho both scoring own-goals. But it is a measure of the turnaround of Middlesbrough that not only the management has changed from that afternoon, Terry Venables and Bryan Robson having departed, but that the other scorer that day, Hamilton Ricard, has gone too.
In fact, only three of the team that started at Highbury last April will play tomorrow at Old Trafford: Mark Schwarzer, Dean Windass and Alen Boksic.
In total, Steve McClaren has dispensed with 15 players with first-team experience since he became manager 10 months ago. Several others lower down have also been weeded out as he has sought to gut the club and repoint it.
He has bought four players and recruited another three on loan, one of whom, Mickaël Debève, once scored the winner for Lens against Arsenal in a Champions League game.
Debève has featured only once for Boro but Ince's absence and an injury to Jonathan Greening mean that he is likely to start tomorrow. If so, his will be the latest style Robbie Mustoe has to get used to.
Mustoe has played 450 games for Boro since signing for Colin Todd in 1990, which means a lot of new partners. His head should be spinning in theory, but he is much too grounded for that. In all the eruptions that have characterised Middlesbrough over the recent past he has been a calming constant, a player's player, a club hero.
Now 33, he has seen Todd, Bruce Rioch, Robson and Venables all struggle with the particular dimensions of Boro. He has seen Ayresome Park become the Riverside, poverty become wealth, Jamie Pollock replaced by Juninho; so when he said yesterday, "I do believe the club is in safe hands; it feels very strong, very organised, very professional," he was speaking as the best-informed insider possible.
Middlesbrough have stability and direction and, though that cannot be placed in a cabinet, it is worth cherishing. This time last season they had 10 points fewer than now and no apparent idea of what would happen post-Venables. "Consolidation is as much of an achievement as getting to a semi-final," McClaren said yesterday.
Mustoe said: "We struggled last season, and when you struggle the club does seem fragile. You're not sure of its future. But that's the job of the chairman, to lead the club forward, and that's what he did in the summer."
This summer should see another cycle in McClaren's revolution, and Mustoe is in contract talks to stay for more. This is "probably my happiest season", he said, although he stressed there was no favouritism from McClaren, who was his team-mate at Oxford United at the end of the 1980s.
Old Trafford has a resonance for McClaren, not least because of the victory over United a fortnight ago, but also for Mustoe. He was captain there for Boro's semi-final with Chesterfield five years ago. It is another little omen.
"The club is so different now to what it was then," he said, "it is difficult to compare the feelings at the place. Relegation was a massive shadow hanging over us. We don't have that this time. We really want to give it a crack on Sunday."
At those odds, there is nothing to lose.
