Inside story on the success of Middlesbrough's academy and the next generation of stars aiming to light up the Riverside
Boro’s struggles on the pitch have been there for all to see, yet the club has every right to be proud of its academy graduates this season.
Jonathan Woodgate – and later Neil Warnock - gained first-team regulars in Aynsley Pears, Hayden Coulson, Marcus Tavernier and Djed Spence.
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Hide AdYou can count Lewis Wing in that category too, after being plucked out of nowhere from non-league Shildon.
“Hayden Coulson was a lad who just lacked a little bit of self belief and suffered with little niggly injuries - it probably delayed his progress into the first-team earlier - but he always had the ability,” recalls Paul Stephenson, the former Boro under-23s coach oversaw the bulk of the club’s current crop of young talent.
“Lewis Wing came from non-league and there were people at the club who didn’t think he could do it but ability wise, he was fantastic.
“He strikes a ball fantastically and he also has great desire. Marcus Tavernier was always going to become a top player - you could tell. He had the appetite, he had all the tools.
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Hide Ad“Pearsy is just a fantastic goalie. He was absolutely brilliant for me in the first season before we lost him to Gateshead.”
That’s not forgetting Stephen Walker, Nathan Wood, Tyrone O’Neil and Ben Liddle as well, no matter how brief some of their outings might have been.
There are also players that have gone to forge full-time careers elsewhere.
“Luke Armstrong is another one that people didn’t expect to be playing at the level he is now but he had an incredible attitude and appetite once he got that confidence from his spell at Gateshead by scoring goals at a decent level.
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Hide Ad“Our method was, if they were going to fall short of making the first-team then we wanted to make sure they were good enough to earn a career somewhere else.”
Stephenson arrived as Boro’s new under-23 boss in August 2017 - the beginning of a new era for the club under Garry Monk, though that quickly changed to Tony Pulis.
“My job remit when I joined was to move players up to under-23s level and into first-team level.
“It had been a few years since they had produced quite a few players for the first-team - so it was a little bit of a challenge as well.
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Hide Ad“They knew the parameters that were set early on. I set quite a tough environment.
“It was just a case of trying to make them understand how important it is when you step into the first-team that the fun is over and it becomes a job - you’ve got to win matches every week.
“We made it very competitive in training and they thrived. They wanted to win in every training session, never mind every game.”
Under Monk and Pulis, Tavernier was the first to get his first-team bow and quickly made his mark by scoring the winner in a Tees-Wear derby win over Sunderland in November 2017.
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Hide AdAnd while Wing was next to burst onto the scene a year later, Stephenson and the players that would follow suit this season were working away in the background.
“When the likes of Marcus Tavernier and Lewis Wing stepped into the first team - it gave the rest of the lads the incentive they needed to think ‘if he can do it, I can do it.’
“They were good kids. They understood very quickly what was required. When you get a good bunch like that, the next ones that come in see what has happened and think ‘yeah I want to be a part of this.
“They toughened up mentally and physically. You could see there were definitely one or two in there that would thrive.”
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Hide AdSadly for Stephenson, he was no longer at the club when Boro’s latest batch of young talent reached the heights of the first-team after parting company last summer.
However, no one can begrudge him of walking away with his head held high knowing he contributed enormously to Boro’s silver lining this season.
“I am absolutely delighted for them. All of those players had the potential but they bought into what Graham Lee and I asked of them.
“A lot of young coaches believe it is all just about technical ability - which is very important - but they have got to socially handle the dressing room with the first-team boys in.
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Hide Ad“The mental side is very important too. They are going to be playing in front of decent crowds and if they can handle a little bit of adversity, you can crumble.
“I would like to think if you spoke to the lads now - they say it was an enjoyable, hardworking and disciplined environment.
“When I first arrived, we had a traffic light system. Red was ‘won’t get in the first-team or might not get a contract’, Orange was ‘maybes’ and Green was ‘definite’.
“I think we only had one definite on the first meeting that I had and then by the end of my tenure, alongside a very good assistant in Graham and good support staff in Mark Tinkler etc, a lot of them were in green.”