Middlesbrough v Burnley: Boro desperate to avoid matching winless run

Both sides, who shared the spoils in a 1-1 draw at Turf Moor just under a year ago, may have been hailing automatic promotion at season’s end but they have taken contrasting roads since.

While the Clarets have acclimatised admirably to life in the Premier League, the opposite applies for Boro, whose top-flight experience has been tortuous, with the Teessiders looking likely to return from whence they came to the Championship.

The smart recruitment, allied to balanced and coherent tactics employed by Sean Dyche, has ensured that the Lancastrians boast a 12-point advantage over second-from-bottom Boro heading into today’s Riverside encounter.

Given the bad blood between Dyche and ex-Boro chief Aitor Karanka last season, expect the band of Burnley fans who descend on Teesside this afternoon to need no second invitation in reminding home support of their side’s current torment.

Thirteen matches without a league win, since December 17, Boro will equal their worse run of form since the winter of 2008-2009 – coincidentally a season when they were also relegated from the Premier League – should they fail to beat the Clarets.

That will surely end all realistic hopes of survival in the process, while Burnley are also spying an end to their own barren sequence, with Dyche’s side without an away league win all season.

After a desperate defeat at Hull City on Wednesday, Boro have bruised pride as well as points to attend to, with the Teessiders among the playing and coaching contingent feeling the pain more than most in East Yorkshire.

Pledging that Boro will battle on, despite their survival fight looking somewhat doomed with the likes of Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool to play in the run-in, home-grown defender Ben Gibson said: “It is about the team and we won’t stop fighting. There are eight games and 24 points still to fight for.”