When Middlesbrough lost 1-0 at Crystal Palace two Saturdays ago they started with seven graduates from their academy and introduced a further two from the bench. Superficially, that is nothing out of the ordinary. After all Dave Parnaby has been supplying Boro with a stream of fine youngsters for some years now and in the spring of 2006 Steve McClaren's then side fielded 10 academy products in a narrow 1-0 Premier League defeat at Fulham, with another one stepping off the bench. Scrape the slightest bit beneath the surface, though, and the comparison becomes a sick joke.

Nearly five years ago it was the week before the Uefa Cup final – which Boro lost to Sevilla in Eindhoven – and McClaren, deliberately resting several big guns, also boasted Mark Schwarzer, Gareth Southgate, Bolo Zenden, Mark Viduka, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Yakubu, Gaizka Mendieta, George Boateng and Stewart Downing. Fast forward to 2011 and Boro are no longer in the Premier League but fifth from bottom of the Championship. Quite apart from experiencing their most disappointing season for 20 years, they remain locked in an alarming battle against relegation to the third tier.



Tony Mowbray – the one-time Boro captain who travelled to Eindhoven to cheer his former team on – has inherited a right old mess from Gordon Strachan. Although the team are playing infinitely better football, money is too tight to mention and he cannot afford even to bring anyone in on loan to compensate for David Wheater's £2.5m departure to Bolton.

Following last weekend's home defeat to Swansea City, Mowbray issued this stark reminder of the peril facing a club who, not so long ago, had a habit of beating José Mourinho's Chelsea. "We have to wake up to the reality of the situation," said the former Hibernian, West Bromwich Albion and Celtic manager, who arguably should have been preferred to Gareth Southgate by Boro back in 2006, when McClaren left for England duty. "We have to start winning."

Most Boro fans remain convinced Mowbray is the right man but some fear he has arrived at the wrong time. With Strachan's host of Scottish imports having largely either flopped or succumbed to injury – the biggest indictment of the Scot's buying policy is Kris Boyd, a striker who has done very little to justify his status as the Championship's second highest paid player behind Craig Bellamy – "Mogga" is now being forced to hot-house Parnaby's production line into arguably premature service.

Already he has unearthed Joe Bennett, a highly promising left-back seemingly placed on the scrapheap by Strachan. The only trouble is that Bennett is playing in a defence in which the inexperienced centre-back pairing of Seb Hines and Jonathan Grounds show real promise but are anything but streetwise.

Behind them Jason Steele is a young keeper of huge potential but just lately he has started making mistakes and looks badly in need of a rest. Unfortunately, the experienced Danny Coyne has a serious back injury and the 18-year-old Connor Ripley – the goalkeeper son of the former Boro and Blackburn Rovers winger Stuart Ripley – could be damaged by being thrown in the deep end too early.

Sadly, too much of the £35m raised by selling Parnaby's graduates – with £25m accrued from the sales of Downing, Adam Johnson, Brad Jones and Wheater alone – has been frittered on expensive disappointments such as Boyd and, under Southgate, Afonso Alves, Jérémie Aliadière and Mido.

The plan last summer was that, courtesy of post-relegation parachute payments, plus Strachan's "expertise", Boro would return to the Premier League. Instead League One beckons, the parachute payments are ending and Mowbray has confirmed that one of Boro's most experienced players, Julio Arca, will have to leave in the summer. The midfielder earns around £30,000 a week and Boro's manager said: "Julio's contract is at a level which is unsustainable for us. He's on Premier League money and there's not a lot we can do."

Arca is said to be interesting Wigan. Yet when you compare the Riverside Stadium to the DW and then contrast the two club's respective training grounds – Middlesbrough's superbly appointed facility remains one of the best in Europe – it is hard to credit that Boro are struggling so badly.

That puzzle deepens once you wander around Rockliffe Hall, the magnificent new five-star deluxe hotel, golf complex and spa – the reviews on TripAdvisor are positively gushing – which Middlesbrough have reportedly invested around £50m in creating. The idea is that when the hotel and golf memberships reach full capacity the project will earn the football club £5m to £6m a year but, well received as this brainchild of Steve Gibson, Boro's chairman, undeniably is, the current economic depression cannot have enhanced its profitability.

Happily, Mowbray understands these economic cycles. Back in the mid-1980s he played centre-half in a Boro side comprised almost solely of young Teessiders which, under Bruce Rioch's brilliant management, ignored the real threat of the club being liquidated – the gates to Ayresome Park were padlocked at one point – and rose two divisions to reach what is now known as the Premier League.

Gibson played a very big part in Boro's financial rescue in 1986 but during more recent glory years transfer fees and wages for often ordinary players were allowed, almost imperceptibly, to spiral out of control. With the help of Parnaby's graduates, Mowbray's task is to steer Boro safely through a period of painful pruning before rebuilding from the bottom à la his old mentor Rioch.

"When a big tree becomes overgrown you have to cut it down to a base and let it grow again," Mowbray says. "We know we have to prune before we can grow again but we also have to win games while we are doing it. At the moment we are having to weaken our team but still win games and stay in this league. Then we can grow back again. Hopefully, in however many years, Middlesbrough can get back to the Premier League."