Is Keith Lamb Ruining Middlesbrough Football Club?
Keith Lamb, the Middlesbrough Football Club Chief Executive, has been associated with the Boro now for many years (ever since the clubs liquidation in 1986). In the past, he has been partly responsible for such illustrious signings as Juninho, Fabrizio Ravanelli and Gaizka Mendieta, arguable some of the club’s highest-profile signings in Boro history.
But is it time Mr. Lamb stepped aside?
In the past two years, Middlesbrough have lost two of their best players to Bosman deals - Boudewijn Zenden to Liverpool (2005) and, more recently, Mark Viduka to arch-rivals Newcastle United (2007).
Keith Lamb has this idea that you can let your star players contracts keep running out until about one month before their expiration, and that loyalty will prevail and they will sign a new deal, but this is not the case. Bosman ruling states that when a player has six months left on his current deal, he is free to talk to any club regarding a pre-contract agreement to a free transfer at the deals expiration. Keith Lamb does not seem to know this rule exists…
Okay, Keith Lamb has brought some good players to the club, and played a key role in the Boro’s move to the Riverside Staidum. But how long can we keep on praising the man for work he has done in the past? Players like Mark Schwarzer and Aiyegbeni Yakubu have come out and expressed their concern at the way in which the club went about the Viduka deal, and many fans are not happy about the situation either.
If Zenden & Viduka were tied up on deals about a year before their expiration, then Boro could have cashed in £4m on Zenden, as he was in top form at the time, and at least £2m on Mark Viduka one year or eighteen months later - or, even better, kept them in the squad, so now, because of Keith Lamb’s policy, we are two players, or £6m, out of pocket.
Keith Lamb needs to either seriously consider his contract negotiations policy, or, seriously consider his role at the club.
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Discussion - 28 Responses
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Thanks Ahmed!
Are you numb? viduka and zendon are both selfish greedy types, have you not listened to southgate recently? he only wants people who are passionate about putting the boro shirt on. Zendon and Viduka do not have boro in thier hearts, lams has, now go and shake your head clown and get behind the team and club, if not, go and support NUFC
Sorry about that Alan
Easy to blame him , but without all the facts it is unfair.
Zenden was a big loss , and still hasn’t been adequately replaced , but as the mags will find out , Viduka only plays in the run up to a tournament or contract negotiations.He was anonymous for the first two years.
So I would say , no , he should stay.
I’ve got to agree with John Brown, I’m afraid. I don’t see how Keith Lamb is personally to blame for Viduka and Zenden deciding to seek a new club, especially as both have gone to bigger clubs.
Now in my eyes, McClaren and Southgate are to blame for Middlesbrough’s demise. ‘Boro have one of the best youth set-ups in the country, but your youngsters seem to be breaking into the first team and then stopping their progress. What happened to James Morrison and Adam Johnson last season? I think that it was quite a gamble to appoint Southgate last season, as well as being a move that estranged the club from other premiership chairmen, and I am still yet to be convinced by Southgate’s credentials… he doesn’t seem to be getting the most out of players, notably Yakubu seems dissatisfied.
you might want to get you facts right, zenden was on a one year loan deal he went o n a free as he wasnt boros to sell.
NUFC Rock!!!!
P.S good article
i think appointing southgate was the wrong thing to do.
It is easy to write an article when you only have half the story.You are not privvy to internal knowledge and player negotiations.MFC have a wages structure,Zenden and Viduka were offered good deals,they turned them down,so how is the Lambs fault?
If Lamby was at fault for the 3 points disaster I am sure he has learnt a lesson and moved on,he does a great job for the Boro and you should find something constructive to write about.
Hugo..Morrison isn’t good enough and johnson is an integral part of Boros future,he is still only a kid.
Have you got any idea at all what Keith Lamb does on a day to basis, what his exact terms of reference and job description are and what his actual level of performance is?
Your opinion is based entirely on the few scraps of info you get from the media and it’s not enough.
Unless you know Keith Lamb or Steve Gibson personally and they provide you with info, then you aren’t really qualified to comment and your opinion is meaningless.
This article is a load of rubbish, Zenden and Viduka left for higher wages, Lamb in both cases offered a contract which the players turned down, yes Middlesbrough could of cashed in on the players but then Middlesbrough are not a selling club, if Viduka and Zenden wanted to play for Middlesbrough they would of stayed and signed the new contracts that where available to them. Good riddence i say,,,, Viduka will revert to his old self again, injured unfit and nothing to play for as he will be guaranteed all those many notes in his bank account every week!
Two words disprove your case:
Tuncay Sanli
how can you make middlesboro any worse, just hope big viduka doesnt score against you lot, lol. nufc 4-mfc 0 viduka scoring 4 hahahahahahahahahahaha
nufc 4 ever
You pretend you know intimately what goes on in the months approaching a players contract end. You don’t and stop pretending you do. Your whole point seems to be based around assumption?
Steve Gibson is no chump. He sets the policy and Lamb implements it. If he didn’t he would have been LONG GONE. As that isn’t the case, I’d like to think that Gibson is happy with the job and your assumptions are baseless.
what a load of rubbish.
It’s steve gibson who is the man at the top and not keith Lamb. Why don’t you be critical of Gibson as he is the one who hires and fires people and seems happy with Mr Lamb. Gibson is the chairman and major shareholder so he has teh final say on what we pay players,ticket prices,transfer budget and so on. Do you really think Gibson lets keith lamb run the club for him on his own?
Alan Magor; Yes, I can tell it’s your first ever article. Presumably you wrote it for your Primary School magazine? You obviously know nothing about Middlesbrough Football Club and your article is pure opinion, nothing analysed on a factual basis. You make Alan Oliver look like a journalist; give it up before you start.
Boro bollox - initially he was on a year’s deal, then he signed a year’s contract with us. Just so your facts are straight. It doesn’t matter anyway - Zenden said he would sign a longer term contract if Boro got into Europe again - which they duly did, at which point he disappeared onto the sidelines at Liverpool. Good riddance. I agree with the comments of Steve Goldby up there entirely ^^^^
u crazy fucking brits take this way to seriously…….there is no need to bash the guy incessantly. Calm the hell down. Explain what he did wrong and thats the end of it. Idk, does lambasting someone from behind a computer screen make u feel better or something?
keith lamb is only apart of our many many problems and is the public face on most of them but we dont know if it is him that causes the problem or not! ziege min fee clause and 3 point shambless should probably have been included
Yes, Gibson does run the football club, but not every chairman runs his football club the same way. Gibson has always been the sort of chairman to allocate jobs to his team, and Lamb has always been in charge of Boro negotiating deals with their players. He comes up with the offers, and Gibson gives him a yes or no.
Yes, we did offer good deals to Viduka and Zenden, but we offered them too late. We should have sat down about a year or six months before their contract expired and began negotiations. If, at that time, they were adamant that they wanted to wait till the expiration of their contract - gfine, there would have been nothing that we could have done about that. But the fact of the matter is, we didn’t, and that is partly the reason why we lost them.
trodbitch - The rules and regulations on contract negotiations, the bosman ruling and pre-contract agreements is readily available on the FIFA website under the rules and regulations. Contrary to common belief, there is research behind this article.
Dude - Yes, Sanli Tuncay is a great signing that Lamb has helped achieve, but what I am saying is that it’s okay Boro signing big players, but we need to stop them all from leaving on Bosman deals.
Many players who leave Boro complain about the backroom set-up, and especially Keith Lamb - Ravanelli, Emerson, Maccarone, Mills, even Carbone said things about Keith Lamb which =, luckily for the club, never made the media. I used to play with alot of the youth team during the 90’s, and they and their parents all said the same things about Lamb, all of which were negative.
This has happened to Zenden & Viduka, almost happened to Boateng as well, so who will be next? We cannot go on just allowing some of the best players to ever grace the Riverside pitch to leave on Free transfers, because the likes of Sanli Tuncay aren’t always going to be available on a free transfer to replace them. If Tincay wasn’t available on bosman, he’d have cost us upwards of £5m or £6m, and that is a big percentage of any Boro budget.
Yes, we’ve got away with it this time, but we may not next.
Boro , a club with some ambition but limited funds like many of the other mid-table sides. Not really the chairmans fault is it? I’d blame the G14 or have a read of that article about making the premier league some type of communist share-all…
- however it’s great to see another club besides Manchester United getting a decent discussion going on this site.
yeah Ardi i agree with you, some big hard men behind computer screens, the lad is only trying his best, jesus its only his opinion at the end off the day, anyway lets see the lot giving this lad grief write something amazing!!!!
although the loss of viduka and zenden on free transfers does reflect poorly on boro, i think that it is hard to condem the clubs entire transfer/contract policy based on this. a name that i havnt seen mentioned here that is probably going to seem like a heroic signing is jonathan woodgate. woodgate could have joined any number of clubs, and despite what he says i find it hard to believe that he would only choose the club because he supported them as a boy. something has to be going right at boro.
Xela, when’s the new record coming out?
Keith Lamb or not, Middlesbrough need a revolution or something ilk-ish. Apart from rocking the big boys at the Riverside and selling Stuart Parnaby to Brum (why Gareth, why????) and losing the two mentioned players over contract sillyness, two more possibly in the shape of scwharzer and yakubu, what have Boro done over the past few seasons? Oh they had that amazing UEFA cup run? Anomalous is one word to describe boro. Magic roundabout, it aint just Keith Lamb (cos it isn’t his fault alone- he aint a Ridsdale so leave off Magor!), it’s the whole damn show yo!
No fence- just saying it like I’m seeing it.
Alan, hope you write again mate, don’t let the boo-boys get you down
Keith Lamb and Steve Gibson have brought Middlesbrough a long way since 1986. Remember that and your negative comments will disappear into insignificance.
Keith Lamb is my hero.