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Middlesbrough Football Club is “not for sale”.

That’s the message coming out of the club loud and clear, following speculation that a Chinese company tried to buy a stake.

It’s true that representatives from a Chinese firm have spent time at Rockliffe Park and the Riverside Stadium this season.

They were on Teesside to discuss potential business ventures and, reportedly, they subsequently made a bid to buy the club.

However, the Gazette has been told categorically by a senior club source that Boro are simply not for sale and never have been since Steve Gibson took sole control in 1994.

That’s not to say that there hasn’t been interest in Middlesbrough - the Chinese firm were understood to be keen to push through a deal - but the chairman simply isn’t interested in selling his hometown club or, indeed, a stake in his beloved Boro.

In fact, it’s fair to say that he’s not even interested in listening to any offers, such is his commitment to the team he supported as a boy.

Boro are one of the few major English clubs not to change ownership over the past decade or so.

They are also one of the few major outfits in this country to still be British owned.

(Image: Ian Cooper)

Gibson’s links with Boro go back to the early 1980s, when they were in Division Two (now the Championship) and struggling financially.

The club went into liquidation in 1986 and Gibson, then aged just 28, was instrumental in putting together the consortium that gave Middlesbrough FC a new lease of life.

Under his chairmanship and heavy investment, Boro attracted former England and Manchester United legend Bryan Robson as manager and won promotion to the Premier League in 1995.

After winning promotion under Robbo, the club spent 13 of the next 14 years in the top flight.

Gibson also masterminded the building of the Riverside Stadium in 1996 and, what was at the time a state of the art facility and is still a valuable asset, the Rockliffe Park training complex near Darlington, which opened in 1998.

Gibson appointed Dave Parnaby as Academy director and the club produced a steady conveyor belt of talented North-east born players who have achieved a career in professional football.

On field achievements so far have included two Wembley cup finals in 1997, another in 1998, the 2004 Carling Cup victory and two successive seasons of European football culminating in the 2006 UEFA Cup final in Eindhoven.

The club have also been able to sign international players like Juninho, Fabrizio Ravanelli, Mark Viduka and Alen Boksic, something that was unthinkable in the 1980s.

More recently, the chairman wrote off more than £100m of club debt and, during the Championship years, was bankrolling Boro to the tune of around £1m per month.

He has since backed Aitor Karanka in the transfer market after appointing the Spaniard as head coach in November 2013 and was awarded an OBE at Buckingham Palace for services to economy, sport and the community.