Middlesbrough

Also written as Boro.

The club

Middlesbrough were founded on 20 October 1876 and are the twelfth oldest league club in England and Wales. They play at the Riverside Stadium in Middlesbrough, listed at a capacity of 34,742 for 2026/27, having moved there in 1995 after 92 years at Ayresome Park. The Riverside was the first ground built to the all-seater recommendations of the Taylor Report. The club are known as Boro, and their supporters as Smoggies, a name first used against them because of the industrial haze over Teesside and since adopted by the fans themselves. They play in red shirts with white detailing, usually with a white chest band, a feature introduced by Jack Charlton in 1973. The crest was redesigned in 2026, returning to a roundel with a lion, to mark the club's 150th anniversary.

Recent seasons

Boro have been a Championship club throughout this period. They finished 17th in 2019/20 with 53 points, 10th in 2020/21 with 64, 7th in 2021/22 with 70, and 4th in 2022/23 with 75, losing the play-off semi-final. Eighth followed in 2023/24 with 69 points and 10th in 2024/25 with 64.

2025/26 was their strongest campaign of the run and ended in the cruellest way. Rob Edwards began the season and left on 12 November 2025 after 15 matches to take the Wolverhampton Wanderers job. Kim Hellberg arrived from Hammarby and took charge from 26 November 2025. Boro finished fifth with 80 points from 46 games, 22 wins, 14 draws and 10 defeats, 72 scored and 47 conceded. They were level on points with fourth-placed Southampton, who were then disqualified from the play-offs for multiple breaches of EFL regulations relating to the unauthorised filming of other clubs' training. Boro had drawn the first leg of that semi-final 0-0 on 9 May and lost the second 2-1 on 12 May, Riley McGree scoring for Boro against goals from Stewart and Charles, and went through on Southampton's disqualification rather than on the pitch. In the final at Wembley on 23 May 2026, in front of 84,506, Hull City beat them 1-0 with an Oli McBurnie goal in the fifth minute of stoppage time. Morgan Whittaker was the season's leading scorer with 14 in all competitions. Boro went out of the FA Cup in the third round and the EFL Cup in the first.

Honours and landmarks

The League Cup of 2004 is the club's only major trophy, won 2-1 against Bolton Wanderers at the Millennium Stadium and taking Boro into European competition for the first time. They have won the Second Division twice, in 1926/27 and 1928/29, and the Anglo-Scottish Cup in its inaugural season of 1975/76, beating Fulham over two legs. They won the FA Amateur Cup in 1895 and 1898. They were FA Cup runners-up in 1997 and League Cup runners-up in 1997 and 1998. The 1973/74 promotion side took 65 points under two points for a win, a divisional record.

The best-known campaign is 2005/06, when Steve McClaren's side reached the UEFA Cup final having recovered from three-goal aggregate deficits in both the quarter-final against Basel and the semi-final against Steaua Bucharest. Sevilla beat them 4-0 in Eindhoven. In the middle of that run Boro fielded the youngest starting eleven in Premier League history, average age 20, with nine English teenagers.

The club came within minutes of ceasing to exist. In April 1986 Middlesbrough borrowed £30,000 from the PFA to pay wages and were relegated to the Third Division; that summer the club was wound up and the gates of Ayresome Park were padlocked. Steve Gibson, then a young board member, put together a consortium and completed the £350,000 Football League registration with ten minutes to spare before the deadline for 1986/87.

Record attendance at Ayresome Park was 53,802 against Newcastle United on 27 December 1949. The record at the Riverside is 34,836 against Norwich City on 28 December 2004; the lowest there was 3,918 against Northampton Town on 11 September 2001. Tim Williamson holds the appearance record with 602 between 1902 and 1923. George Camsell is the leading scorer with 345 goals between 1925 and 1939, and in 1926/27 he scored 59 league goals in a single season including nine hat-tricks. The record fee paid is £15m for Britt Assombalonga in July 2017; the record received was £18m for Adama Traore to Wolverhampton Wanderers in August 2018, a figure Boro have since beaten this summer.

Notable scorelines

Record victory: 11-0 against Scarborough in the FA Cup on 4 October 1890. Record league win: 9-0 against Brighton and Hove Albion in the Second Division on 23 August 1958. Best away wins are both 7-1, at Blackburn Rovers on 29 November 1947 and at Derby County on 29 August 1959. Record league defeat: 0-9 against Blackburn Rovers in the Second Division on 6 November 1954. Record cup defeat: 1-8 against Hebburn Argyle in the FA Cup on 12 December 1896. Heaviest home defeat: 1-6 against Arsenal on 24 April 1999.

Head-to-head notes

Middlesbrough do not publish all-time head-to-head records on their own site, and no reliable all-time figures could be established for their 2026/27 Championship opponents. The three clubs a Teesside writer would reach for first are all absent from the division this season: Sunderland and Newcastle United are in the Premier League and Leeds United were promoted in 2025, so there is no Championship derby of that kind in 2026/27. The most recent meetings that matter are the two play-off legs against Southampton on 9 and 12 May 2026 and the final against Hull City on 23 May 2026, and Hull are now in the Premier League. Lincoln City, the opening-day visitors, have only just come up from League One and no established record between the clubs was found.

Right now (2026/27)

Kim Hellberg is head coach, in post since 26 November 2025, having led Hammarby to Allsvenskan runners-up finishes in 2024 and 2025.

Boro have spent heavily after the play-off defeat, funded by one very large sale. Hayden Hackney left for Everton on 2 July for £17m plus up to £8m in add-ons, comfortably a club record fee received. In the other direction, winger Jeremy Sarmiento joined from Brighton on 15 June for an undisclosed fee. Goalkeeper DJ Bernard came from Liverpool, left-back Cayden Cole from Hull City and right-back Ezra Tika-Lemba from Newcastle United, all on frees on 1 July. Myles Peart-Harris signed from Oxford United on 3 July for an undisclosed fee. Striker Kyle Joseph joined from Hull City on 10 July for £4m, and Will Lankshear arrived from Tottenham Hotspur on 22 July for £10m plus a further £10m in add-ons, a club record outlay. Midfielder Sebastian Berhalter signed from Vancouver Whitecaps on 28 July for £1.65m. Archie Baptiste left for Harrogate Town on 24 July and Ollie Samuels went to Cliftonville on a season-long loan on 21 July.

Pre-season brought a 2-2 draw at Farense on 11 July, a 1-1 draw at Celtic on 18 July, a 3-1 home defeat to Huddersfield Town on 25 July, and a home fixture against Espanyol on 1 August.

The Carabao Cup first round brings Wrexham to the Riverside on Friday 7 August 2026 at 8pm. The Championship season opens at home to Lincoln City on Saturday 15 August 2026 at 3pm.

Sources

Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.