Source: Telegraph
Middlesbrough punish Mido and Afonso Alves
Southgate made no attempt to disguise his disappointment in the pair as he revealed that the club had taken action although he refused to go into detail about the level of punishment meted out to the two forwards by their paymasters after they went Awol.
Mido remains conspicuously absent but Alves has belatedly returned to Boro' s Rockliffe Park training ground where Southgate spoke to the press on Thursday as the countdown to the Championship campaign gathered momentum at the newly-relegated club.
‘Afonso is in training now, both players have been spoken to and disciplinary matters have been dealt with internally and both players are under no illusions as to the feeling of myself as manager as to what's expected of them in the future,' Southgate said.
'We deal with these things internally, it disappoints me these thing become public as quickly as they do. That's the world we live in. My focus is on the players here training.
'I expect every professional to conduct themselves in the right way, simple as that, we will train to the level of the strongest in the group and set our standards to the highest level and people come along with us or they don't.
'Afonso is back in training, Mido isn't back yet. We know when we're expecting Mido back. He should have been back on Monday, he's not, we've dealt with it and both players will be disciplined and it's the end of the matter as far as I'm concerned.'
Southgate spoke out as he paraded new signings Mark Yeates and Danny Coyne.
'I'm looking for players that are hungry to play for this club and who have a desire and who want to be here. Character-wise they're the right sort of people we want here.
'The squad is well balanced, I don't expect it to be the same squad as when we kick off in four weeks' time and I've got to monitor other players who might be coming in. We've got targets in mind.
'We've got to be prepared. I've said to the players it will be a difficult time until the squad settles down but the focus of those definitely here is to get back into the Premier League.
'I'd like to retain everybody that wants to be here and who is ready for the challenge of taking us back into the Premier League. If they don't want to be here then fine we wish them good luck. We have to be better than we were last season to get out of this division, I believe we will be and we've got a point to prove.'
Southgate insisted that he would learn lessons from last season that ended in relegation.
He continued: 'There had to be a period of reflection and inquest. If you don't do that it's a missed opportunity. We can't keep looking over our shoulder and with recriminations and now we have to go forward.
'There's no set formula for getting out of this division. We need players who're aware of the battle that lies ahead.
'We're going to have to score two goals per game to get out of this division and we'll play exciting football. We got in the habit of losing so we will have to change our mindset and that will be the key because we were a team that got into the habit of losing.'
