Middlesbrough FC legend Bernie Slaven on darkness before the dawn with 'Class of 86'

BACK in August 1986, Chris De Burgh's 'Lady in Red' topped the charts, while a famous old club in red came within a whisker of oblivion. Four decades on, Middlesbrough Football Club - despite a heart-breaking finish to the 2025-26 season at Wembley - are in rude health, by contrast.

Their story has largely been a successful one, more especially after the Riverside Revolution of the mid-1990s and Boro have a fair bit to look forward to.

They host Wrexham in the curtain-raiser to the first full weekend of action for Yorkshire clubs in 2026-27 in an EFL Cup tie on Friday and are among the favourites for promotion to the Premier League.

A few weeks ago, Boro forked out an initial £10m fee for one of the most promising young strikers in the country.

In the summer of 86, it was a desperate time in comparison.

Beset by all manner of financial problems for several years, matters came to a head as a consortium battled to save professional football in Middlesbrough. The victory was won with 37 minutes to spare ahead of Football League deadline. It was perilously close.

Bernie Slaven remembers that time well.

He went onto become a club legend and darling of the terraces at Ayresome Park - his trademark goal celebration on the fence in front of the Holgate End will always be in mind's eye of Boro supporters of a certain vintage when they get nostalgic about their former home.

There wasn't much nostalgia around in the mid-80s on Teesside. Sub-5,000 crowds were commonplace at Ayresome, while unemployment rates reached around 28 per cent in some parts.

At the end of 85-86, Boro were relegated to the third tier amid riotous scenes in their final match of the season at Shrewsbury. Further bad headlines were to follow.

A consortium - including Steve Gibson and representatives from ICI and Scottish and Newcastle Breweries - fought to save Boro that summer.

Debts approaching £2.9m - a massive amount back then - had crippled the club.

An advert was placed in The Times for further interested parties to come forward and help, with businessman Henry Moszkowicz crucially joining the consortium.

Already a board member, Gibson had taken total executive powers earlier that year after a heated meeting.

He was able to wind up the old football club to enable the new consortium to take Middlesbrough FC forward without the existing shareholders benefiting.

It required the agreement of the Football League, who were concerned that several clubs had previously used the liquidation route to survive, while leaving massive unpaid debts.

Gibson and colleagues continued to fight to save Boro and raise funds, even when the local council withdrew their £200,000 stake.

On the Tuesday before the start of the 86-87 season, things looked bleak with the Football League, while happy with process regarding paying off creditors, insistent that a bond of £1.9m had to be lodged to guarantee that creditors would be paid in full. ICI representative Colin Henderson managed to secure that agreement after speaking with Sir John Harvey-Jones.

On the Friday, consortium members were based in one hotel room in London, with Football League representatives in the other. The document was finally signed ahead of the headline. Just.

Boro were saved with Henderson named as chairman of Middlesbrough Football and Athletic Company (1986) Limited. Gibson, Moszkowicz, Graham Fordy and Reg Corbridge were also on the board with it announced that the club would play at Victoria Park, Hartlepool in their Division Three opener against Port Vale the following day (August 23, 1986).

The players who choose to stay rather than leave that summer would take centre stage. The Class of 86.

Slaven told The Yorkshire Post: "We used to train not knowing if we had a club. We were in a position where the football club could have gone out of business.

"I used to go home after training every day and put on the local news to see if we were saved. Because nobody at the club could tell me.

"I used to watch the news every night, religiously. I don't watch news now, but back then I did, to see if we were saved.

"So you can imagine what we went through. We weren't getting paid and training in crap pitches, local parks and washing our own kit."

Slaven made up the Clydeside contingent who stayed at Boro alongside Gary Hamilton, while Archie Stephens was a Scouser.

The remainder of the squad was made up of Teessiders or those who hailed from nearby County Durham or Tyneside. Local lads who cared.

Boro had a leader on the pitch in Tony Mowbray and another in the dug-out in Bruce Rioch. Son of a sergeant-major, Rioch found his calling and will forever be revered on Teesside.

He was the disciplined, principled figure who brought the football side of the operation together.

Rioch is arguably the most important manager ever in the history of Boro with his braves coming together to represent the region with distinction. Back-to-back promotions followed in one of the most astonishing transformations ever witnessed at one club.

By late spring 1988, Boro were back in the big time. The names of Mowbray, Pallister, Cooper, Ripley, Pears, Slaven et al entered into Teesside folklore and several more besides.

Bonds were forged in that summer of 1986 when the gates at Ayresome Park were locked by bailiffs and Boro trained at local parks as a group of young men somehow kept their faith under Rioch.

Slaven, a £25,000 buy for the club from Albion Rovers in 1985, did. In the process, he heeded the words of his father during Boro's vicissitudes that summer.

"Clubs like Middlesbrough survive Bernard, they always do" were the words of Slaven senior, who used to watch Celtic on the terraces with his boy. But it was a close-run thing.

After uttering those words, he sent an envelope with cash to his son to pay his monthly mortgage with Slaven struggling to make ends meet alongside the rest of his Boro team-mates

Players queued at the Town Hall for wages that summer with the consortium and later the PFA paying them just a basic wage.

In his time on Teesside under Rioch, Slaven endured a bit of a love-hate relationship with the regimented Boro manager until his departure in the spring of 1990.

The Glaswegian's respect for Rioch remains strong. He was the authoritative figure that Boro's players needed four decades ago.

Slaven recalled: "There was no 'big time Charlies' and no edge.

"When we went into liquidation, many lads could have left the club, but they didn't. And I think that was a lot to do with the love of the club, because the majority were from this area.

"If it happened right now, the players would all head off. They wouldn't be hanging about.

"You wouldn't expect any modern players to be loyal. Maybe the local lads, but the rest would be jump ship right away. I've no doubt about that at the majority of clubs up and down the country. I laugh when I see them kissing the badge.

"They kiss the badge today and they're gone tomorrow.

"I've made big connections with a lot of people from that time (in the second half of the 1980s) and enjoy their company.

"I still see a lot of the old players, Pally, Mark Proctor, Tony Mowbray; they're still my mates. I still see them on a regular basis."

Slaven also remembers that opener in Hartlepool, a 2-2 draw.

Ironically, Pools were the opponents for the club's first game back at home, a League Cup tie on September 2, 1986 as Boro set sail for the most remarkable voyage in the club's history.

The Scot was at the heart of it. He scored 21 goals that season and enjoyed a productive partnership with a much-travelled target man in Archie Stephens. They remain great friends to this day with both making their home on Teesside.

Slaven continued: "I remember it was a late kick-off (at Hartlepool) because there was a game on before us. We started at about half four or five.

"We didn't have a dressing room. We got changed in a cabin.

"Archie scored two great goals out there. Fantastic. It was just great to survive and still have a football club."

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