Next Middlesbrough manager: Interim boss Leo Percovich has rousing message to Boro fans

Percovich has been taking training alongside Craig Liddle, Mark Tinkler and former Sunderland and Boro midfielder Lee Cattermole.

Percovich, speaking earlier this week, said: “It is a difficult moment but we have the knowledge, the experience and the passion to do the right thing.

“The next game is the most important.

"The players and us all know that we have to be better. For the quality, the squad and for who we are as a club, we have to be better. We are ready for that and we are going to show that we are.

“It is in our blood, it’s a red passion, it’s a red love, it’s Boro and Teessiders,” he added.

Percovich added: “It’s something that make us from Middlesbrough unique.

"It’s something that makes us different to every other club around the world.

"No matter what kind of situation when things are going wrong, when things are undoubtful, nobody cracks, nobody crumbles and we stick together.

“We are forged in steel and iron. That’s why wherever we go, everybody knows we are Middlesbrough,” he added.

Rob Edwards, whose 11-game reign at Watford came to an untimely end last week, has been featuring prominently in the current thinking to replace Chris Wilder, who was sacked on Monday morning.

Boro have also been linked with Chelsea coach Anthony Barry, who was touted for the vacancy at Huddersfield last month, and Nottingham Forest head coach Steve Cooper, whose presence at the City Ground has come under scrutiny following a difficult start to life in the Premier League, which continued with a 4-0 defeat at Leicester on Monday evening.

Gary O’Neil is unlikely to return to Middlesbrough as Wilder’s replacement as the club searches for its sixth boss in less than five years.

Former Boro midfielder O’Neil, currently interim manager at Bournemouth, is understood to have come under consideration when the Teessiders drew up an initial list of potential candidates. But chairman Steve Gibson is looking elsewhere.