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Michael Walker Wednesday May 10, 2006 The Guardian Steve McClaren joked last Saturday that you could write a book about Middlesbrough's season but, for those steeped in Teesside, 2005-06 merits only a chapter. Boro's chairman Steve Gibson, for example, said 2006 has been "extraordinary" in its own way but it is merely the latest twist in a personal, financial association with the club that goes back to 1986. Spectacular comebacks have marked the run to the Uefa Cup final in Eindhoven tonight but they are nothing compared with the kiss of life Gibson and four others administered to Middlesbrough that year. With the company liquidated, the Ayresome Park gates locked, players and coaches sacked in the summer, only a rescue package overseen by the then 28-year-old Gibson saw Middlesbrough survive as a Football League club. But it was so close-run that Boro, refused access to Ayresome Park by the receivers, had to play the opening game of the 1986-87 season at Hartlepool's Victoria Park. The trouble was that Hartlepool were at home that day, too, so Boro kicked off against Port Vale at 6.30pm in front of 3,456. Archie Stephens scored twice in a 2-2 draw and Middlesbrough were reborn. Middlesbrough Association Football Club became MFC (1986) and that is how they have remained. In 2006 they are unrecognisable and Gibson sat in an office in the palatial training ground near Darlington and surveyed the ride. "It's fresh in the mind, but then it isn't," he said. "In some ways it feels like a long, long time ago but of course significant events do stick. It's when you see, like in recent weeks, old photographs of 20 years ago and people on it are unfortunately deceased. You think 'Bloody hell, I remember Joe, I remember this and remember that' and it kind of brings back the atmosphere of the day. "It was a strange period in that, for me, I was quite young and was asked to get involved. Then I was up to my neck in it. It was so intense, you never knew how bad the situation was. Every time you picked up a stone, something crawled out. It was horrendous. I thought originally that the debt - and this was a long time ago - was £1.3m. To put it into context, the turnover of the club was about £200,000. Then the £1.3m became £1.5m and then £1.7m, £1.8m, £2m and then £2.1m. "And then the old directors said that the club owes them 'this amount'. The biggest amount of money that went out was to the old directors. You couldn't lose sight of the fact that your role was to save the club, because in any other walk of life you would have picked up an axe and chopped people's heads off. You were saving the club to give all this money to these individuals who had already raped the club and killed the club. I'm quite open about it, I'll give you names, it's whether you'll print them." Lawyers intervene at such moments and Gibson should know. As he recalled, that match at Hartlepool was fraught with legal arguments with the Football League. "If we hadn't gone ahead with the game, we were out. Hartlepool played first and we were having all kinds of problems with the Football League, they were useless. We'd applied to the Gola League. We were going to rebuild it that way. It was an early-evening kick-off and about 100,000 people now tell me they were there. I remember Archie Stephens scoring two cracking goals, going two up and eventually drawing 2-2. We're planning a 20th anniversary with everyone involved." By the next home game, against Bury - Boro were in the old Third Division - they were back at Ayresome. But Gibson was thinking about moving. Ten years later the Riverside was erected and to mark its 10th season the old gates from Ayresome were installed outside. Famously in '86 they were photographed padlocked with the manager Bruce Rioch and his unemployed players standing outside. Now they act as a reminder of where Middlesbrough have come from, though Gibson is unsentimental about them. "I would have sold them for scrap," he said. "It was the March [1986] when the club couldn't survive. But a white knight appeared. He was a genuine guy called Alf Duffield and Alf came in on the back of a very successful company. Unfortunately it was a bubble. I was thinking: 'Phew, how lucky is this? I'm going to disappear into the background.' But it didn't happen. I think he was here for six months. His business went and the club didn't have a white knight any longer. It had this huge debt. "What I had to ensure was that the club fulfilled its fixtures, it was how I could get into a position of running the club without interference from the shareholders. You had third-generation shareholders, the great-grandchildren of the original shareholders dating back to 1876 and some of these guys were on the board. You would go to a board meeting and they would be talking about what they were having for lunch, they wouldn't be talking about the debt, because Middlesbrough FC had always just trundled on. "I remember going in and saying to sort this club out there's got to be clear lines of authorisation and the first thing I want is full executive power to run the club. They went 'rhubarb, rhubarb', the cigars came out. Eventually they gave it to me and they said: 'What are you going to do now?' I said: 'None of your business, you're all sacked.' It was up and down, all kinds of things went on, some of it very unpleasant, but at the end the club was saved." Not a man to mess around, Gibson, Middlesbrough-born and bred, has fulfilled a role of saviour-strategist-benefactor ever since, as well as chairman. Now he presides over arguably the best academy in the country, a team in a European final and, at least for another 24 hours, a manager bound for England. Gibson and McClaren have not always seen eye to eye but, when McClaren needed Gibson most, in January and February, the chairman delivered. "I felt at that time, when you took away the emotion, there was definitely a relegation threat. There were too many people who thought we'd be all right and I was guilty of the same complacency. The Villa game really woke us up as a club. We suddenly realised that this is a crisis. "At times like that you need people to be up front and we had some individuals, the manager, the skipper Gareth Southgate, right through the club, who were. I saw no chink in Steve's belief that he could get us out of this." Gibson is in a position to judge. Getting out of it has been the story of Middlesbrough's run to the Uefa Cup final, but it pales beside the original salvage operation performed by Steve Gibson 20 years ago.