Criminally? I wouldn't say so. He wasn't blessed with pace, didn't have a great amount of technical ability and his dribbling was somewhat effective yet not great. What made this painfully obvious is that stupid one trick pony faint he used to do every single game when he was on the left wing, attempting to knock the ball past his opponent with his left and use what pace he had to get a cross in. The cross being the only attribute i would say was standing out over anything else, but then he lost that "standout" ability later in his career. The truth is he was better than average but never had the potential to be a great player. He scored some great goals for Boro, but unfortunately never scored enough of them. Downing would never have been the player that was going to stand out every week and he never did when things went sour for Boro. Coming off a 9 goal season the year before, you'd think he'd push on and become a talisman in the side especially when we were struggling for points for most of the season. The season we got relegated he never scored a single goal in the league. He could probably be regarded as one of the Boro greats, but a great player or underrated, i wouldn't really say so. I'm grateful i got to watch him numerous times, and back then i used to love Stewy but i can look back with hindsight with my better football knowledge than when i was 17 and appreciate him for what he did for us back then and have this opinion of him now.

I kinda ment just before he went to Blackburn as I thought he still had a place in the team.

Merson for me. Carried that team to promotion. He was more influencial than Juninho.

Was still setting loads up tbf