🕵️‍♂️ Football League Focus: Middlesbrough | OneFootball

Welcome to our latest series here at OneFootball where we’re shining a light on one Football League club each week.

It’s our chance to go in-depth on sides that don’t normally attract our attention and hold up a magnifying glass to the plethora of brilliant stories outside the Premier League.

So far we have looked at:

Cardiff City, Derby County, Sunderland, Nottingham Forest, Huddersfield, Stoke, Birmingham, Sheffield Wednesday, Norwich, Bristol City, Portsmouth, Watford and QPR.

This week it’s the turn of Teeside giant – home of Bob Mortimer, Chris de Burgh and, quite astonishingly, the British Institute of Modern Art – it is, of course, Middlesbrough.

Can you tell me a bit about the club?

One of the founding members of the Premier League, Middlesbrough have been a perennial presence in the top two divisions of English football for almost their entire history.

About as far away from the metropolitan glamour of London and Manchester as you can get, Boro had an astonishing Golden Age in the 1990s and early 2000s, attracting Champions League winner Fabrizio Ravanelli and Brazil international Juninho to the club and playing some brilliant stuff in the process.

But there was plenty about the Teesiders before their recent rise to prominence, with some of the games greatest names passing by their famous old Ayresome Park.

Any great moments from their history?

Formed in 1876, Middlesbrough won the FA Amateur Cup in 1895 and 1898, but unfortunately that wouldn’t be a portent of their success to come.

The club turned permanently professional in 1899 and almost immediately moved to their Ayresome Park ground before gaining promotion to the First Division. Boro would stay there for the next 22 years, finishing as high as third in 1913/14 before the Great War intervened.

Between the 20th century’s two World Wars, Boro got their hands on the club’s first professional piece of silverware, winning the Second Division title in 1927, and following relegation, doing it again in 1929.

George Camsell was the hero of both those championship wins, scoring a remarkable 59 goals in the 26/27 campaign and would go on to be their all-time record goalscorer with 325.

The middle part of the century was pretty middling for Boro, brightened only by the emergence of Brian Clough as a local goalscorer in the late 50s and Jack Charlton as their manager in the 70s.

It wasn’t until the arrival of chairman – and saviour – Steve Gibson that green shoots of recovery started to blossom on Teeside.

The local businessman saved the club from liquidation in 1986 and went about ploughing most of his money back into the football team and local area.

Despite being a yo-yo side for most of the late 80s and early 90s, Boro were one of the founding members of the Premier League and all the riches that came with English football’s newest division.

Bryan Robson was hired as manager in 1994 and brought about a total revolution at the new Riverside Stadium. In came Juninho from Brazilian side Sao Paulo, a Joga Bonita footballer unlike any they had ever seen on Teeside.

Then there was the signing of Fabrizio Ravanelli, the ‘White Feather’ had been a Champions League finalist with Juventus in May 1996, by the start of the following Premier League season, he was leading the line for Boro – his debut hat-trick against Liverpool is still one of the division’s most iconic moments.

Boro would also reach their first FA Cup final this season, eventually losing to Chelsea 2-0 at Wembley, as well as long the League Cup final to Leicester on a replay.

Going into the 21st century, and Boro had never won a professional cup competition – but that would change in 2004 when a Steve McClaren led side, captained by Gareth Southgate, would beat Bolton 2-1 in the League Cup final.

It kickstarted an unfathomable run of success which would culminate in reaching the 2006 UEFA Cup final.

Boro would eventually lose to Sevilla in Eindhoven, but they got to the showpiece event having come from 3-0 down to beat both Basel and Steaua Bucharest 4-3 in the quarter and semi-finals, respectively.

And surely there must be some lows as well?

The Third Division isn’t somewhere Middlesbrough have been for much of their history.

Boro have only been relegated to the third tier on two occasions – the first in 1966 after Brian Clough’s sale to Sunderland and the second in 1986.

It was the latter that almost ended the club, with severe financial mismanagement seeing them slide down the pyramid and at one point having to borrow £30,000 from the Professional Footballers’ Association to pay wages.

That summer, Boro called in liquidators and had the gates to their Ayresome Park stadium padlocked.

Without £350,000 capital required for a Football League registration, a new rule at the time, it seemed inevitable that the club would cease to exist.

Step forward Steve Gibson and their 90s renaissance.

Who are the club legends?

Wilf Manion was a local lad who ended up playing nearly 350 times for Boro and is so far the club’s only player to score in a World Cup for England.

Brian Clough is now far more famous for his management but during a six year playing career with Boro scored 204 league goals – the third-highest in their history.

Juninho only spent three seasons at the Riverside but his arrival from Sao Paulo ushered in a golden age for the Teesiders.

What about the current squad? Any players to look out for?

Former Sunderland wonderkid Duncan Watmore has come back after some dreadful luck with injuries and is impressing on the right wing at the Riverside. Five goals in nine starts has seen the 26-year-old lead their goalscoring charts this term.

Meanwhile, in defence, left-back Marcus Tavernier is turning heads with his consistently impressive performances. The 21-year-old is a former Newcastle youth star who has dropped down a division and is showing everyone why he deserves another chance in the top flight.

Is the manager any good?

Well that depends entirely on your view of Neil Warnock.

Some may say he’s a lower league legend, who has never really done a bad job at any of his 16 clubs.

Others bemoaned his old-fashioned ways and wonder how on earth he has stuck around in the game for so long.

Personally, it’s the latter camp for me. Warnock is straight-talking, heart-on-sleeve, says-it-like-it-is, insert-cliche-here – but all the better for it.

His football may be from a more prosaic age but Warnock is one of the best man-managers in the game and knows how to get a tune out of almost any group of players.

Finally, how are things looking this season?

About as impressive as it gets.

Despite a slight wobble recently, Boro are well in the hunt for promotion and currently sit just one place and four points behind Reading in sixth.

Recent wins over Luton, Millwall and Swansea have shown some real character and they will need even more of that heading into the last half of the campaign.