Jordan Rhodes completed a £9m deadline-day move to Middlesbrough on Monday after a weekend of intense negotiations. Ahead of his debut, Chief Sports Writer Scott Wilson met the striker to talk transfers, family kick-abouts and the art of scoring goals

GIVEN his surname, it is surely only fitting that the story of Middlesbrough’s most expensive deadline-day signing was a tale of two roads.

“I suppose the weekend was a bit different,” said Jordan Rhodes, who is set to make his Boro debut against his former club, Blackburn Rovers, this afternoon after completing a £9m move from Ewood Park on Monday.

“I was at my mum and dad’s on Sunday, which is just south of Huddersfield. Instead of coming up the M1 and A1 to Middlesbrough, it was a case of going across the M62 to Blackburn with my girlfriend. It really was like that for me. Instead of letting it get stressful, it really was that simple.”

Speak to any of the people involved in the tortuous negotiations that resulted in Rhodes signing a four-and-a-half year deal with Middlesbrough, however, and ‘simple’ will not be the first word that comes to mind.

On Sunday morning, the move was on. By Sunday afternoon, it was off at the behest of Steve Gibson, with Boro officials taking the unusual decision of publicly confirming that talks had broken down because of a failure to agree personal terms.

With claim and counter-claim continuing to swirl around, we will probably never know the precise details of what went on inside the cramped boardroom office at Rockliffe Park, but by Monday morning, the mutual acrimony has dissipated sufficiently for talks to be rekindled.

Rhodes, desperate to finally secure a move to Teesside after his attempts to force through a transfer last summer had proved unsuccessful, was only too happy to make a return journey across the Pennines. If nothing else, at least he didn’t have to pack again.

“I’d left the bags in the car just in case,” he explained. “Everyone thinks it was this or that, but actually the Monday was pretty smooth. I was in at Blackburn in the morning, and the manager there (Paul Lambert) just said, ‘Get yourself home, and if something happens, it happens. But if not, you come into Blackburn tomorrow focused and committed’.

“I was more than happy with that situation, so I just got myself home and got myself sorted. But then things progressed during the day, and I got the call to get myself back here. Thankfully, I was able to get here in plenty of time to get things sorted, and the contracts dotted and things like that. All in all, it was relatively stress free.”

Perhaps it is Rhodes’ lifelong exposure to the trials and tribulations of life as a professional footballer that enables him to adopt such an equanimous approach.

His father, Andy, was a goalkeeper who played for Oldham in a League Cup final and represented a number of clubs in both England and Scotland before ending his career with a brief spell at Scarborough.

His uncle, Steve Agnew, is Boro’s assistant manager, a familial link that surely played a significant role in Rhodes’ decision to move to Teesside, and football has always had a central place in his everyday life.

“It’s all I’ve ever known,” he said. “It was all I knew growing up and I only ever see the positive in having a professional sportsman as a dad and an uncle. My uncle was good to bounce ideas off, being an outfield player, and I think my dad has lived a second career through me.

“He has shown me the pitfalls of professional sport, where to go, where not to go. That’s all I’ve done. My dad is my hero, and all I’ve ever wanted is to go out at 3pm on a Saturday in a football strip, in front of fans, with two goals….”

But didn’t having a former goalkeeper as a father ever present problems when it came to childhood games in the garden? “He’d let the odd one go in,” laughed Rhodes.

Rhodes dabbled with goalkeeping himself during his youth, but by the time he was settled into a secondary school in Ipswich – his father had taken up a coaching role with Ipswich Town by that stage – his abilities as a goalscorer were already apparent.

He joined Ipswich’s academy shortly after his 15th birthday and was a regular scorer for the Suffolk club’s under-18s and reserves teams. He made his senior debut in the 2007-08 season, and spent time on loan at Oxford, Rochdale and Brentford as he build up experience of the senior game.

The expectation was that he would swiftly claim a place in Ipswich’s first team, but instead, then Town boss Roy Keane opted to sell him to Huddersfield for £350,000. It was a decision Keane would come to regret.

“I still get criticised for selling Jordan, and I have to accept that,” said Keane, in his autobiography ‘The Second Half’. “But it was also a club decision. We sold him to Huddersfield, down a division, and he started scoring loads of goals.

“I think I was the one who suggested a sell-on clause, and thank God we had it because they sold him to Blackburn for £8m. The mistake myself and the staff made with Jordan was we discussed what he couldn’t do rather than what he could.”

That conversation has followed Rhodes throughout his career. The 26-year-old has scored 20 or more goals in every season since 2009, yet conversations over his relative merits tend to focus on his perceived failings outside the penalty area rather than honing in on the quality of work inside the 18-yard box.

It seems counter-intuitive to criticise a striker for ‘only scoring goals’, yet Rhodes has had to deal with that accusation throughout his playing days.

“The people I try to model myself on tend to be real penalty-box players,” he said. “People like Henrik Larsson or Gary Lineker. They did all their work in the box, and I always remember someone saying of them that they weren’t scorers of great goals, but they were great goalscorers. I like that motto because I consider myself in that sort of bracket.

“I openly admit I’m not one for scoring spectacular goals, but for me, the best ones are those ones you get that go in off the keeper. If I’m getting those kind of goals, it means I’m doing my job. If you score a goal from 30 yards, it can be a one in 100, it’s pot luck sometimes.”

Rhodes’ key challenge now is to ensure he scores sufficient goals to ensure his first full season as a Middlesbrough player will see him making his debut in the Premier League.

“That’s the ambition,” he said. “That’s the aim. That’s what I work towards every day, and it’s what I wake up in the morning dreaming about. It would be a terrific feeling. That’s what everybody in the changing room is striving towards, it’s the ultimate goal.”