What's Worst That Can Happen? Think Of 1986!

Last updated : 20 May 2009 By Boro Mad

Yeah we face relegation ... but what the hell ... at least we will still have a strong club and a chairman who will do everything in his power to get us back up.

Gareth Southgate: "Whatever happens at the end of the season, certain players will leave.

"We know that this football club will still exist, and many of the decisions we have taken this year have been to keep the club alive."

"To stay in this division, you have to take huge financial risks and banks are going to start calling those risks in.

"We have to cut our cloth."

The club's most recent accounts, for the year to 31 December 2007, showed that Middlesbrough lost £8.3m, following £13.3m in 2006, and had total creditors of £131m.

The club's bank borrowings, £93m, were the fourth highest in the Premier League, yet this at a club with nothing like the status or earning power of the three more indebted, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool.

Southgate's frank talk suggested that those borrowings had become unsustainable even before the £40m drop in TV income which relegation now entails.

Middlesbrough's chairman, Steve Gibson, had not, contrary to some reports, loaned the club £69m of that £93m, but his company, Gibson O'Neill, does own and stands behind the club, and guaranteed £83m of the borrowings.