Middlesbrough have sacked head coach Michael Carrick after two-and-a-half years in charge.
The former England midfielder, 43, took over at the Championship side in October 2022 for his first role in management.
He guided the team to a play-off finish in 2022-23 but they have missed out on the top six in the past two campaigns.
Carrick’s assistants Jonathan Woodgate and his brother Graeme Carrick have also left the club.
Boro spent much of the 2024-25 season challenging for a play-off spot but one win in their final six matches proved to be costly.
They stayed in the hunt for a top-six place until the final game of the season but defeat at Coventry saw them finish 10th.
His departure means that 17 of last season’s 24 Championship teams have changed manager since August last year.
Carrick started his coaching career with Manchester United, with whom he won five Premier League titles in his playing days, after retiring in 2018.
He had a spell in caretaker charge of the team in November 2021 after the departure of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer but left when Ralf Rangnick was appointed in December.
Boro turned to him in October the following year after a disastrous start to the season saw them sack Chris Wilder with the club in the relegation zone.
Carrick immediately turned their fortunes around as they flew up the table and into promotion contention.
They ultimately finished fourth for a first play-off campaign in five years but were beaten by Coventry in the semi-finals.
They fell just short of another Premier League push in the following season, as they finished eighth, four points off sixth.
Last season was similar as they headed into the final six games in the play-off spots but came up short in the end.
Middlesbrough’s decision to sack Carrick may surprise some outside Teesside but one thing it can’t be described as is a knee-jerk reaction.
A month has passed since Boro’s 2-0 defeat at Coventry on the final day of the Championship season.
That loss was their 18th of a desperately disappointing season and was followed by the head coach insisting “I’m carrying on” in his BBC Radio Tees Sport post-match interview.
Many Boro fans had come to the conclusion he would be doing just that as the days and weeks ticked by without any sign of white smoke from the club’s Rockliffe Park training ground. However, that silence was not indicative of inaction.
Boro’s hierarchy had let it be known they would be conducting an in-depth review into the reasons a season where promotion had been targeted and budgeted for ended in a failure to reach the play-offs despite an unusually low points total – the lowest for a decade – being required to make them.
They were as good as their word, conducting a series of meetings, a number of which involved the head coach, while trying to block out the chorus of disapproval from a fan base which had largely become disenchanted and detached by the season’s end.
There will be a sense of sadness on Teesside that Carrick was unable to follow up on the promise of his first season when some of the football left fans purring. That sadness will be weighed against the reality the club have gone backwards in the seasons since.
Attention now will be on who comes next? Rob Edwards is known to be highly-rated by head of football Kieran Scott while Sheffield Wednesday’s Danny Rohl will be of interest to any Championship club without a manager after his sterling work at Hillsborough.
It is now 10 years since Boro’s last promotion to the Premier League. The next manager needs to be the one who brings that long wait to an end.