Middlesbrough started the season with a new manager and bright prospects, only to have to appoint another boss last month. Despite that, they’re flying high in the Championship, and we look at how they’re doing it.
After 21 games, Middlesbrough sit second in the Championship, seven points ahead of Preston North End in third. That doesn’t tell the whole story of what has been a fairly turbulent campaign, though.
The club sacked Michael Carrick in June after two and a half years in charge, having missed out on the play-offs for a second consecutive season. He was replaced by Rob Edwards, and the former Luton Town boss started brilliantly, winning his first four league games in charge and securing August’s Championship Manager of the Month award.
However, just 14 Championship games into his tenure, Edwards left Middlesbrough for Wolverhampton Wanderers.
By the time he was given permission to speak to the Premier League strugglers, Boro were third, five points behind leaders Coventry City, having won seven, drawn five and lost two. Assistant Adi Viveash took charge for the 2-1 home win over Birmingham City and after Edwards officially departed, remained in charge for the 1-1 draw at Oxford United and the 4-2 home defeat to Coventry.
The club turned to a relative unknown, with Kim Hellberg appointed from Hammarby.
Hellberg did a stellar job at the Swedish club, and has overseen four wins from his first four games since arriving in England, helping Boro get back to a five-point gap off the top and to establish a healthy lead over third place.
Hellberg took over Hammarby after they finished seventh in the Allsvenskan in 2023, and achieved consecutive second-placed finishes in Sweden’s top flight. Their success was largely built on a solid defence, matching champions Malmö FF in keeping 14 clean sheets and conceding just 25 goals in 2024, at least nine fewer than any other team.
In 2025, surprise champions Mjällby (18) were the only team to concede fewer goals than Hammarby (29), but Hellberg’s team kept as many clean sheets as them (14), and they also improved at the other end, scoring the most goals in the division (60).
Middlesbrough would certainly settle for second place this season, though Opta’s expected points model had Hammarby as the ‘expected’ winners of the Swedish title last season, but underdogs Mjällby came through against the odds.
Expected points simulates the number of goals scored in each match using the expected goals (xG) value of every shot. It then simulates the outcome (win/draw/loss) 10,000 times per match. Each team’s expected points are calculated based on how often they win, draw, or lose across those simulations. It’s not an exact science, as expected goals data doesn’t include a lot of factors, such as game state and dangerous periods of possession that don’t lead to shots, but it’s still a decent barometer for how teams performed over the course of the campaign.
Would Hellberg be able to replicate his style at the Riverside Stadium, though? Following his appointment, he said: “I want us to play quick and aggressive football, and to try to win the ball as quickly as possible if we don’t have it. I want us to be quick on goal and create a lot of chances.”
That work to win the ball quickly was on show in Sweden, with Hammarby winning possession in the opposition’s final third more often than any other side in the Allsvenskan in 2024 (174) and 2025 (160).
It will take time to implement that at Middlesbrough, but they do appear to be going in that direction. Since Hellberg was appointed, only four teams have had a lower PPDA (passes per defensive action) than Boro (11.5). Their PPDA was 12.5 under Edwards, with 10 teams having lower.
Their average of 6.9 high turnovers per game under Edwards has actually gone down to just 5.0 under Hellberg, but in fairness their four most recent opponents have not been teams who see an awful lot of the ball, so there were fewer opportunities to win it from them.
Hellberg looked set to lose his first game in charge after falling behind against Derby County in the second minute, only for goals in the final 15 minutes from Matt Targett and Morgan Whittaker to turn things around.
The confidence boost from that game was on show at Hull City, where they raced into a 4-0 lead at the break. It ultimately ended 4-1, but Boro restricted the Tigers to just two shots on target in the game.
Strong starts have been a theme of the last three matches. That victory at Hull was followed by a 2-1 success at Charlton Athletic in which Boro led 2-0 at the break, and a 3-1 win against QPR, where the hosts were again 2-0 up at half-time, and 3-0 up by the 50th minute.
That could be because they often attack with purpose. A direct attack is an open-play sequence that starts just inside a team’s own half, has at least 50% of movement towards the opposition’s goal, and ends in a shot or a touch in the opponent’s box. Middlesbrough did produce direct attacks often under Edwards, with no team having more than their 25 by the time he departed, but they only scored from two of them. Under Hellberg, only Ipswich Town (14) have recorded more direct attacks than Boro (10), but no team has scored as many direct attack goals as them (3).
That said, their direct speed upfield has actually been the slowest in the Championship in the last four games (1.49 m/s). Direct speed upfield measures metres per second that the ball is progressed upfield in open-play sequences (the median is used to remove extreme values). That is no great change, as Boro were also fourth slowest in the division under Edwards (1.73 m/s), but it again somewhat mirrors Hellberg’s time at Hammarby, who were second slowest for direct speed upfield in the Allsvenskan last season (1.66 m/s).
You can see from the zones of control graphics below how much more Middlesbrough have dominated the ball under the Swede.
Middlesbrough zones of control under Rob Edwards Middlesbrough zones of control under Kim HellbergThat is similar to how his Hammarby side generally dominated the ball last season.
As alluded to earlier, though, Boro’s four opponents since Hellberg arrived have all been teams that do not really prioritise possession. Charlton and Derby have the two lowest average possession percentages in the Championship this season, while Hull and QPR are also in the bottom nine for possession. Whether this level of control in games will continue remains to be seen, but it’s a promising start. Their home game with Southampton on 4 January will be a good indicator given Saints average the most possession in the Championship this season.
No one player particularly took the lead in terms of goal involvements under Edwards, with nobody recording more than two goals or two assists before he left for Wolves.
However, Whittaker has stepped up under Hellberg with four goals and an assist in four games. The former Plymouth Argyle man is thriving, with eight goals in the Championship this season; only five players have more. He has also scored his eight goals from just 2.8 xG; only Coventry’s Sorba Thomas (8 goals from 2.4 xG) has outperformed his xG by more in the competition.
Hayden Hackney will also be an important figure for Hellberg, assuming Middlesbrough can keep hold of their star midfielder in January. Hackney is an all-round contributor, having won possession more often than anyone else in the Championship this season (124), while he also has more attacking sequence involvements than any other player (115).
Middlesbrough could do with creating better chances if they’re to keep pace with Coventry, though. They have so far outperformed their xG by 8.6; only the Sky Blues (+8.9) have done so by more, but Frank Lampard’s side at least still have the highest xG in the division (43.1). Only seven teams have a lower xG than Boro (24.4).
They are keeping it tight at the back, though. Only Ipswich (19.0) have a lower xG against than Middlesbrough (20.1).
That brings us back to expected points, which shows that, according to our calculations, Boro have actually been overachieving to this point. They have around 10 points more than they should, which would put them below Watford, Birmingham and even Sheffield United in Opta’s xPts table. No team has overperformed in this sense as much as them in the Championship this season.
That’s not to say they don’t deserve to be where they are, though. Winning games when the xG suggests you probably shouldn’t does not just indicate luck, it also shows ruthlessness at both ends of the pitch, and as mentioned, does not account for game states. Middlesbrough taking early leads in recent games has likely contributed to lower xG numbers due to not needing attack as much.
We’re not quite at the halfway point of the season so there’s a long way to go, but there’s an increasingly likely scenario whereby Hellberg could be overseeing Middlesbrough’s first Premier League game since 2017 next August, while Edwards is either back in the Championship with Wolves, or possibly even looking for a new job.
The Opta supercomputer currently gives Boro a 60.1% chance of automatic promotion, while it rates Wolves’ chances of going down at a whopping 99.5%.
Schadenfreude isn’t healthy, but it is inevitable.
Hellberg has made a solid start, emulating Edwards in winning his first four games. The club and fans will just have to cross their fingers that they can hold on to their new man a bit longer, and if so, the future looks bright for Boro.
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Kim Hellberg Already Has Middlesbrough Fans Forgetting About Rob Edwards Opta Analyst.
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