MIDDLESBROUGH: Gibson - 'Playing for hometown team like a rollercoaster - just highs are even higher and lows even lower'

BRIGHTON at home is a game that stirs memories for Middlesbrough fans. Cristhian Stuani’s close-range finish.

The euphoric pitch invasion that saw jubilant supporters hoisting aloft the players on their shoulders. The impromptu party at the Dickens that ended with members of the first-team squad singing along to Oasis while squatting on the roof.

An outpouring of Teesside pride at the end of a period that had been blighted by bad news stories and economic plight, and there in the middle of it all, with the broadest smile and the loudest singing voice was Ben Gibson. The hometown hero. The boyhood fan, living out the hopes and dreams of those he had once sat alongside in the stands.

Fast forward a year-and-a-half, and much has changed. Boro have been to the Premier League, and come back down again. Stuani is no longer there, along with five other players who were involved in the promotion decider. The manager has gone, along with his successor. But Gibson remains. A little older, a little wiser, but still the same born-and-bred Boro boy, riding the magic carpet journey he dreamed of as a youth.

He could have left in the summer, when relegation changed Teesside’s footballing landscape, but somehow it just wouldn’t have felt right. There are family ties to consider, but Gibson’s relationship with his football club cuts much deeper than simply having his uncle in charge of the boardroom. In an era when footballers are earning half-a-million pounds a week, Gibson is a reminder of a time when the game was about something more special. Community. Belonging. Pride. Not, however, that it is always plain sailing.

“You get days like the one against Brighton, and they’re way more special because of the relationship you have with the club,” said Gibson, as he gazed out of the window at Boro’s Rockliffe Park training ground, with the imposing vista of the Cleveland Hills rolling away into the background. “Football is a rollercoaster, everyone says that, but I think when you play for a hometown club, the rollercoaster is just a lot more up and down. The highs are higher, the lows are lower, and that’s just part of the life when you’re playing for your hometown club.

“The attention and the interest in constant. It might be transfer speculation, but it’s the same with winning or losing. It’s something I’ve grown up with up whilst I’ve been here.

“It’s great when you’re winning, but obviously last season was very difficult. You can’t get away from it. You analyse the game and then put it to bed and think, ‘Right, that’s forgotten, we’re going to win the next one’. But then you go round your family and friends, and all they want to talk to you about is the game at the weekend and why it’s going wrong.

“‘Why are we not winning?’ ‘Are we going to be relegated?’ ‘Are you going to stay?’ Bang, bang, bang. That’s quite consuming, but that’s the life I’ve chosen and I wouldn’t swap it for anything in the world. I love playing for Middlesbrough.”

Gibson loved winning promotion, loved playing in the Premier League, but with a searing honesty, he admits there have been times when the current campaign has been a struggle.

Relegation arrived with a shudder, with Aitor Karanka’s hasty exit and Steve Agnew’s unsuccessful caretaker spell adding to the sense of upheaval. Garry Monk was supposed to sift through the mess, but his six-month reign created confusion rather than clarity. Boro clung on to the coat-tails of the play-off places, but everything felt like a battle. Nothing felt right. Hence the decision to dispense with Monk in order to appoint Tony Pulis.

“There’s only a few clubs that come down and bounce straight back,” said Gibson. “Newcastle did it, but they didn’t go down in the same manner that we did. We went down in a real negative manner. There were a lot of problems, a lot of problems inside. That got resolved, but there was a huge turnaround of players, and not just players, but also staff. A new manager, new ideas. It takes a lot of time.

“We have been stop-start, and we have stuttered. We haven’t played to the levels we should have, individually and as a team. We all know that, and no one has hid from it. It’s something that we’re trying to address.

“The football club obviously made the change with the manager, and so far we’ve benefited from that. We’re starting to play together as a team, and look more solid at the same time. Hopefully, the goals will stop going in because we have a look to us where we look as though we’re not going to concede now.”

Yesterday marked the one-month anniversary of Pulis’ appointment, and while the Boro boss might insist he is still coming to terms with what he has inherited, it has not taken long for his imprint to become apparent. Hard work, organisation, discipline. Old-fashioned traits perhaps in a world where an Ipad can track a player’s every move, but still qualities players can relate to.

“There’s no grey areas with the new manager,” said Gibson. “He knows exactly what he wants, and that comes from experience and having his own clear thoughts about things. It’s easy for the players. You don’t need to have an opinion, you don’t have an opinion – what the manager says, goes.

“What he wants goes. That’s simple. If you don’t follow those instructions, you won’t play in his teams, but I’d much rather it was like that. I think anyone responds to a clear message much better than to one that could be portrayed in different lights or interpreted in a different way.

“Yes, every manager has their own ideas and their own method, which might suit some players and not suit others. But one vital thing with any manager is that his ideas are clear, and I think that’s something you can certainly say about this manager. He has that aura when he walks in a room. When he walks in, people stop talking.”

Had things gone differently in the summer, though, it is quite conceivable that Gibson would not have been sitting in the Middlesbrough dressing room listening to Pulis.

Towards the end of the relegation season, the 25-year-old was called into Gareth Southgate’s England squad. Surely, with a senior England cap on the horizon, he wouldn’t remain on Teesside to play in the Championship?

There was interest from West Brom, with two bids rejected. Gibson never wanted to leave, but at the same time, he wasn’t always sure the final decision would be in his hands.

“It was a difficult time because you don’t know yourself what’s going to happen,” he said. “It’s a tough time as a player. It’s weird. It’s nothing I’d ever experienced before, and the not knowing is strange.

“Even though I’ve always been a player who has always given 110 per cent in everything they do, and that remains the same, there is sort of a different air about you. The not knowing is quite unsettling.

“That was a learning curve for me, but the result is that I’m still here and I’ve continued to work in the same way, working as hard as possible. My performance at certain points might not have been as high as it was last season, but that’s football. Players come and go into form. But I think lately, and particularly at QPR at the weekend, I’ve played a couple of games where I’ve played really well.”

Last season, Gibson was marking the likes of Sergio Aguero, Diego Costa and Harry Kane. Clearly, that was a considerable challenge, but while the Championship does not boast strikers with anything like as much quality, is still presents its own set of problems to even the most talented centre-half.

“You look at the players you’re up against in the Premier League, and you’d say that is a tougher challenge,” he said. “But the manner in which a Championship game is played is more difficult. It’s helter-skelter, less structured. It’s rock and roll football really.

“It’s off-the-cuff. The ball gets cleared, then it gets launched back in rather than having a couple of minutes to get your shape again, like you have in the Premier League. It’s constant, it really is, and I think that’s something where if your structure and formation or the balance of your team isn’t right, those little gaps can find you out. Sometimes, a goal doesn’t go in because of an individual’s fault, it goes in because you haven’t got the right structure.”

Which brings us back to Pulis, and the energy-sapping drills that Gibson has been perfecting on the training ground in the last few weeks.

“We’ve been working a lot to iron out those faults we’ve had,” he said. “We changed our style of football under Garry Monk to try to be a lot more expansive, and the result of that was while we didn’t even get that many more goals going forward, we opened up a lot more at the back and conceded a few more.

“With Tony Pulis, you know what you’re going to get. He builds from a more solid base and foundation, and that’s something we’ve had success from in the past. I hope we’re going to have more success from it in the future.”

Starting this afternoon, when Brighton return to the Riverside in the fourth round of the FA Cup. Unlike two seasons ago, a home win today won’t result in a pitch invasion. But for a Boro boy brought up on tales of cup glory, it will still feel a little bit special.