The first time she passed out in her own sick, I knew she was the girl for me.

Middlesbrough boss blames the single life for team's rotten displays...

What is about Scottish managers and marriage? Just a few weeks ago Sir Alex 'love doctor' Ferguson bizarrely tried to get Johnny Evans to marry his girlfriend while at a press conference. Evans, wisely, decided not to listen to the mental pensioner and changed the subject to the importance of keeping it tight at the back, especially when defending set-pieces. Bullet dodged. Although, perhaps it would have been a good idea to get hitched during a press conference. If the marriage went tits-up, Evans could have claimed he never actually said 'I do' and was mis-quoted by the press. In your face child support agency! All the more Ferrari Estates for me.

Now 'the ginja-ninja' Gordon Strachan has claimed the reason why Middlesbrough are so mince is the fact all the players, bar three, are unmarried. According to the the diminutive Scot, a married player is a better player.

"It felt strange to come to a club where there are only three members of the first-team squad that are married. Emanuel Pogatetz is one of few players who are. I have never come across anything like it in my life. It's a big miss. You need responsibility in life. I’m not going about finding wives for them, it was just a shock to me.”

It is a bit of a shock to us too. Emaunuel Pogatetz looks like a light bulb with ears. And he is named after a 70's French porn film. So how the hell he managed to bag a wife is a mystery even Miss Marple might struggle with.

But perhaps Strachan shouldn't be surprised that so many of the Middlesbrough squad are without a wife. Anyone who has spent a Saturday evening out on the town in Teesside will have noted that, in terms of finding a suitable partner, the pickings are slim. The women who frequent the bars and clubs of Middlesbrough could not be described in such a fashion.

So unless you are a player who finds attractivness in morbidly obese women who slug down Smirnoff Ice's at a rate of seven per hour, who shoe-horn themselves into a dress so tight that they look like a beanbag stuffed into a condom, who take to the dance floor thinking they are Beyonce but look like a bouncy castle, who consider it acceptable to eat a KFC while simultaneously smoking a cigarette and an attempt to have sexual intercourse will result in the gentleman being injured by burning his asre on the lightbulb, then Middlesbrough is probably not the club for you.

What should surprise Gordon Strachan is not the fact that all but three of his squad are unmarried. What should shock him is that three of them are.