The Official Summer Transfer Window 2025/26 Season

[Uncle-Festa 306 170]

Harry Darling, CB at Swansea, on a free transfer looks like it could be brilliant business. Bags of experience at this level, captain material and still only 25.

[Dynamo Kev 1,817 6.4k]

21 minutes ago, Uncle-Festa said:

Harry Darling, CB at Swansea, on a free transfer looks like it could be brilliant business. Bags of experience at this level, captain material and still only 25.

looked good when i've seen him

[LBP 4,126 6.6k]

Prediction based on nothing but guesswork 

Kezza Scott loves a Yank

Sargent at Norwich

Steffen and Morris here and been linked to a couple more

Few sales to the MLS also 

Boro will sign an American or someone from the MLS this summer. 

A bid for QPR’s Charlie Kelman? Not sure why he’d leave them for us but who knows 

[Neverbefore 14,774 29.2k]

3 hours ago, Bruce said:

Fact is, he did. Us and Derby were joint highest spenders in 15/16 our promotion year and not just by a little: we both spent over £30m while the next closest was Burnley spending around £22m. After that I don't think anyone spent more than £10m.

The year before we were 5th highest spenders behind Norwich, Wigan, Cardiff & Fulham. (I had forgotten that Wigan spent a fair while in the Premier league and had parachute payments. They have spent 8 years in the Premier in the last 20 compared with our 5.)

Karanka used it well, but it's undeniable that for 2 seasons he was the best supported manager in the league when it comes to money. We not only competed with parachute payment teams but usually outspent them. 

A huge chunk of that budget went on 10mil for Jordan Rhodes and 7mil for Stewart Downing, neither of which he particularly wanted. We may have spent the most but we didn't have a championship super squad imo. We had a decent team with players who knew the system inside and out and actually fought then added that one bit of quality we needed to get over the line in ramirez, and he didn't cost anything asides from 20k a week wages.

He doesn't get the credit he deserves. 

[Bruce 2,986 2.4k]

18 minutes ago, Neverbefore said:

A huge chunk of that budget went on 10mil for Jordan Rhodes and 7mil for Stewart Downing, neither of which he particularly wanted. We may have spent the most but we didn't have a championship super squad imo. We had a decent team with players who knew the system inside and out and actually fought then added that one bit of quality we needed to get over the line in ramirez, and he didn't cost anything asides from 20k a week wages.

He doesn't get the credit he deserves. 

Fair enough. Back in the days that Gibson couldn't stop himself from interfering. I reckon that both seasons AK had a squad that was about in the top 4 in the league and got them to play to their standard; well-drilled and determined. But I do remember how painful it was watching us limp over the line in the promotion season. I remember Ledbitter talking about staging an intervention at a barbeque or something and even though we made it in the end, it never felt as though the club was together from top to bottom. After the Charlton fiasco, Gibson needed to back or sack AK but sort of did neither. 

I put a fair amount of the reason for our immediate relegation on Gibson who showed the same tendency to dither then panic over AK as I suspect we'll see 2 months into next season with Carrick.

[Jonny Ingbar 523 721]

3 hours ago, Tarmo Kink Army said:

Yeah let’s not forget that also run that was saved by nugents goal against hull where Karanka had fallen out with the squad before, but every team has its faults. Karanka season was great but even then had its moments

Yeah, of course it did.

He really organised us and made us difficult to play against, but it was very predictable too.  Score the first goal, we'd win, conceded the first goal and we'd really struggle.

Didnt score.many but didn't concede many, effective, but hardly free flowing.

[LinoJo3 5,528 13.2k]

35 minutes ago, Jonny Ingbar said:

Yeah, of course it did.

He really organised us and made us difficult to play against, but it was very predictable too.  Score the first goal, we'd win, conceded the first goal and we'd really struggle.

Didnt score.many but didn't concede many, effective, but hardly free flowing.

People are asking for that now though, apparently don’t care about football ‘just want results’.

[TeaCider24 17,849 23k]

1 hour ago, Jonny Ingbar said:

Yeah, of course it did.

He really organised us and made us difficult to play against, but it was very predictable too.  Score the first goal, we'd win, conceded the first goal and we'd really struggle.

Didnt score.many but didn't concede many, effective, but hardly free flowing.

Only two teams won more games from losing positions in that season than Middlesbrough did, and only 2 teams lost fewer games.

Winning games that you're losing in isn't a particularly common occurence.

[LinoJo3 5,528 13.2k]

1 hour ago, TeaCider24 said:

Only two teams won more games from losing positions in that season than Middlesbrough did, and only 2 teams lost fewer games.

Winning games that you're losing in isn't a particularly common occurence.

That’s a surprising stat tbh, but I do get what he means. It was actually very similar to criticism Carrick gets now, when we were losing under Karanka it seemed like he never really changed it, we still sat deep and still played cautiously, never really looked like even trying to get a goal. I remember lots of ‘no plan B’ back then aswell.

[TeaCider24 17,849 23k]

13 minutes ago, LinoJo3 said:

That’s a surprising stat tbh, but I do get what he means. It was actually very similar to criticism Carrick gets now, when we were losing under Karanka it seemed like he never really changed it, we still sat deep and still played cautiously, never really looked like even trying to get a goal. I remember lots of ‘no plan B’ back then aswell.

Yeah, people were always banging on about playing with two strikers to try and score more.

But we were a very well drilled team and though we scored less than the teams around us, I think it gets overegged.

We were 8th highest scorers, but only 9 goals behind the top scorers, and only a handful behind most of the other teams.

Though the argument against that might be that the quality of that squad could have scored even more if we'd been more adventurous.

[Redcar Rioja 8,889 8.7k]

19 years ago today was the start of Boro's decline and fall from grace apart from the Karanka "blip". Since then SG has made a series of poor management appointments and repeatedly left it too late in replacing them. It appears highly likely now that we are about to sit through yet another limbo period while Gibson dithers in an effort to preserve his reputation of being a great Boss.

To many fans it simply translates as enjoy your stay in the Championship watching us spaffing more money up a wall with a Manager/Coach who is on borrowed time but just enough to scupper Boro hopes for the next 12 months, rinse and repeat. 

Just think, next year it will be 20 years since that pivotal point and what that intervening period has brought. It's the same amount of time from 86 to Eindhoven. The incredible meteoric rise to the UEFA Cup Final and then bringing us all the way back down again in a Grand old Duke of York ride. At least the Club is still in existence so small mercies and all that. The generation of fans who have grown up over those last 20 years have had little joy in that period, not unlike those of us watching through the Stan Anderson years. 

[LinoJo3 5,528 13.2k]

6 minutes ago, Redcar Rioja said:

19 years ago today was the start of Boro's decline and fall from grace apart from the Karanka "blip". Since then SG has made a series of poor management appointments and repeatedly left it too late in replacing them. It appears highly likely now that we are about to sit through yet another limbo period while Gibson dithers in an effort to preserve his reputation of being a great Boss.

To many fans it simply translates as enjoy your stay in the Championship watching us spaffing more money up a wall with a Manager/Coach who is on borrowed time but just enough to scupper Boro hopes for the next 12 months, rinse and repeat. 

Just think, next year it will be 20 years since that pivotal point and what that intervening period has brought. It's the same amount of time from 86 to Eindhoven. The incredible meteoric rise to the UEFA Cup Final and then bringing us all the way back down again in a Grand old Duke of York ride. At least the Club is still in existence so small mercies and all that. The generation of fans who have grown up over those last 20 years have had little joy in that period, not unlike those of us watching through the Stan Anderson years. 

Take a look around though, how many teams have actually established themselves from this league to the prem since that last promotion?

Bournemouth, Brighton and Brentford did around that time and then Villa. Ever since then it’s just been the same handful of teams yo-yoing. Maybe it’s not Gibson but football in general? Yes we ballsed up the season after relegation which was probably the biggest mistake. But since then we’ve just been a standard above average championship team and it’s really hard to get out of that. 
 

But we have gone from midtable/bottom half back up to playoff candidates, we’ve got players bringing in a lot of money and the ability to build a decent squad and compete, we’re still in a much better state than lots of other teams around us such as Cardiff, hull, Swansea etc.

There seems to be this expectation that we are ‘supposed’ to be in the prem but Gibson and Carrick are holding us back from that, but is that really true? What really makes us any better than say a Bristol city, Norwich, Coventry?

[Jonny Ingbar 523 721]

2 hours ago, TeaCider24 said:

Winning games that you're losing in isn't a particularly common occurence.

Unless you played Boro last season of course 🫣

[Bruce 2,986 2.4k]

25 minutes ago, LinoJo3 said:

There seems to be this expectation that we are ‘supposed’ to be in the prem but Gibson and Carrick are holding us back from that, but is that really true? What really makes us any better than say a Bristol city, Norwich, Coventry?

By the same token, what makes us any worse than Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth or Crystal Palace?

I don't think Gibson is holding us back but his decision making over the last 20 years has been pretty shoddy. He's paid for it; 1/4 of a billion pounds of his money has drained away but pretty much every time he has tried to reset and renew us, he's failed. Not through want of trying. Back in the days when Gibson's money was enough to buy success it did exactly that. Ever since he has tried to run us as a football business, he's failed.

He's stopped us following down the path that the likes of Wigan took (Wigan have spent more of the last 20 years in the Premier league than us, believe it or not) but we've seen club after club pass us as we've floundered.

I was (and still am) pretty hopeful after he appointed Scott and seemed to be delegating responsibility. The turfing out of Warnock for under-performing despite doing no worse than Carrick did with much slimmer resources seemed to be a pointer that we weren't content to drift. The appointment of Carrick and what seems like a desperate attempt to keep him at all costs makes me think that we'll see Scott leave and the club go back to drifting aimlessly.

[LinoJo3 5,528 13.2k]

17 minutes ago, Bruce said:

By the same token, what makes us any worse than Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth or Crystal Palace?

I don't think Gibson is holding us back but his decision making over the last 20 years has been pretty shoddy. He's paid for it; 1/4 of a billion pounds of his money has drained away but pretty much every time he has tried to reset and renew us, he's failed. Not through want of trying. Back in the days when Gibson's money was enough to buy success it did exactly that. Ever since he has tried to run us as a football business, he's failed.

He's stopped us following down the path that the likes of Wigan took (Wigan have spent more of the last 20 years in the Premier league than us, believe it or not) but we've seen club after club pass us as we've floundered.

I was (and still am) pretty hopeful after he appointed Scott and seemed to be delegating responsibility. The turfing out of Warnock for under-performing despite doing no worse than Carrick did with much slimmer resources seemed to be a pointer that we weren't content to drift. The appointment of Carrick and what seems like a desperate attempt to keep him at all costs makes me think that we'll see Scott leave and the club go back to drifting aimlessly.

Nothing makes us worse than them though I’d say palace are pretty established as a decent club now.

But my point being look at the turn over of clubs between the 2 leagues, it’s tiny. Thinking more I forgot wolves and forest both did it so yes it’s do able of course. But I don’t think it’s as simple as saying ‘Gibson should do better’. A football team at the end of the day is a bit of a lottery made up of very expensive gambles, will the manager work out, will the striker work out, the more you try to increase the odds of it working out the more it costs exponentially.

Gibson has to keep the team competitive whilst also keeping the finances in check. Have we got the balance wrong? Maybe so but we’re still in the game and while we are a bit far off it on the pitch, we’re very secure financially.

It was only 2 years ago Akpom was our only real saleable asset and we had to build a team with that £10m he brought in and maybe that did mean we could hold onto Hackney longer.

Now we will have potentially £30-40m available, that is a huge positive no matter how you wanna look at things. The real work comes when we have to use it properly of course, but as I’ve said we’ve gave ourselves a huge advantage over where we were not so long ago.

Usually this would be the ‘restructure’ season where we do things on the cheap after the spending went wrong, we are miles away from that now.