Boro do not need to break any records this season to secure their first promotion of the 21st century.
Statistics suggest that the two automatic promoted sides will need fewer than 90 points to ensure their places in the Premier League.
That’s the result of one of the most competitive Championships for years, in which virtually any team can beat anybody else on their day.
At the moment Boro are on course for a final haul of 85 points, which might be good enough – though it would be even better if they could up the ante over the next seven games.
Sixteen points from the run-in should guarantee promotion for any of the teams involved, though from Boro’s point of view it means winning five and drawing one of their remaining games.
It’s likely that neither of the two automatic promoted teams will need to pass the 90 points mark, as Bryan Robson’s team did when they last won promotion for the club 17 years ago.
On that occasion Boro finished second with 91 points, three behind champions Nottingham Forest.
The key that season was a stingy defence, just like Aitor Karanka’s side.
However, while Karanka’s men look comfortably set to record the best goals against tally in the Championship, Robbo’s men were only second best in 1997-98.
They conceded 41 goals, while seventh-placed Birmingham City did better with just 35 against.
On current form, Boro will concede only 35 goals this season.
While a good defence looks set to prove the promotion key again, Robson played a different system to Karanka.
Gianluca Festa
Robbo employed three central defenders with wing-backs, which was his favoured system throughout his time on Teesside.
The three main men at the back were Nigel Pearson, Gianluca Festa and Steve Vickers, all three of whom were Premier League quality defenders.
Pearson, who had given Boro sterling service following his arrival from Sheffield Wednesday in 1994, was in his last season before retiring.
It was the second time he had captained the club to promotion.
Despite carrying niggling injuries during his final season and having reached the grand old age of 34, Pearson continued to turn out and led the team by example.
He was such a strong character to have around the club that it’s no surprise he has gone on to forge a successful career as a manager.
Robson had signed Festa from Inter Milan during a difficult playing period in January 1997, and the Italian proved to be worth every penny of his £2.7m fee.
Festa was maybe short of international class, but he was a terrific trainer and thoroughly committed to his work.
He did the right things, ate the right things and gave Boro plenty of stability at the back during his five-and-a-half years with the club.
Vickers went on to play more league games for Boro than Pearson and Festa put together, having been signed by Lennie Lawrence from Tranmere Rovers in 1993 at a time when Boro were crying out for a goalscorer.
It wasn’t the best of starts for Vickers, especially as the fans had been demanding a forward.
But the Bishop Auckland-born defender not only quickly cemented a place for himself in the side but went on to win the player of the year award in his first season on Teesside.
Following Robson’s arrival, Vickers was always one of the first names on Robson’s teamsheet and was always an honest, reliable defender.
The same applies to another experienced back-line man, Irishman Curtis Fleming, who had arrived on Teesside from part-time football in the summer of 1991.
Curtis established himself in the side pretty quickly and, during his ten years on Teesside, played even more games than Vickers, usually at right-back but also on the left.
The other erstwhile member of the Boro defence in the promotion campaign of 97-98 was goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer, who is one of Boro’s best buys in the modern era.
The Aussie cost a mere £1.2m when signed from Bradford City in 1997, a few weeks after Festa’s arrival, and was Boro’s No.1 for 12 seasons.
He went on to play 445 league and cup games for Boro, most of them in the Premier League, and well outscored any of his peers in the appearances league table.
In fact I have revealed on a previous season that Schwarzer would have become Boro’s longest-serving player in history, if he had stayed with the club, instead of turning down a new contract offer and joining Fulham in 2008.
The justification for this comment comes from the fact that Schwarzer, at the age of 42, is still playing Premier League football, for his old mate Nigel Pearson at Leicester City.
If Schwarzer was still with Boro, he would undoubtedly be in the first team, and would comfortably have surpassed Tim Williamson’s 602 league and cup appearances for the club. Ironically, Williamson was also a goalkeeper.
And yet, despite all the achievements of his defenders in 97-98, Robson had placed the accent firmly on attackers in his bid to win promotion at the first attempt.
All of the major signings of this season were attack-minded, the major one being Paul Merson from Arsenal.
There were many doubters when Robson swooped to pick up Merson from Arsenal in the summer of 1997, for a large fee of £5m, mainly because of Merson’s dark background of drink and drugs.
Yet Merson was a model professional during the season and was the significant individual factor in Boro winning promotion. In fact, without him, they would not have gone up.
Merson was not just a scorer of crucial goals, he was an inspiration throughout the club.
Merson said later: “People thought I was mad to leave Arsenal for Boro but they were mad to think it.
“I joined a club that wanted me, a club going places.
“It wasn’t for the money. I actually took a pay cut to join them.
“It’s not every day you have an opportunity to work with somebody like Bryan Robson. It was a no-brainer.”
While Merson played the key role in Boro’s return to the Premier League, he also regained his place in the England squad for the World Cup finals in France.
Unfortunately Merson was involved in a sour departure the following season when joining Aston Villa, but he had done his job on Teesside and Boro made a handy profit of £1.75m on the deals.
Gazza and Bryan Robson
Although Merson had arrived in the summer, Robson did not further strengthen his attack until the New Year when signing Alun Armstrong from Ipswich, followed by fellow striker Marco Branca from Inter Milan and the legendary Paul Gascoigne.
The best days of Gazza were probably over before signing for Boro, though Robson had amassed a strong all-round squad which secured promotion on the final day of the season when beating Oxford United by 4-1 at the Riverside.
It gave Boro a final tally of 77 league goals, which was five behind champions Forest and joint fourth overall in Division One.
Karanka’s side are on course for 70 goals, which will certainly not be the best tally in the Championship, but it’s highly acceptable.
I think the current set of forwards have done a lot better than many people have given them credit for, and I would like to have seen Kike and Lee Tomlin given a little more pitch time.
In any case, the team’s remarkable defensive record offsets any lack of goals at the other end. And there’s still time on improve on the current statistics.
Put Bournemouth behind you lads and go on an unbeaten run over the last seven games. Then promotion will take care of itself.
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