West Bromwich Albion 2-3 Middlesbrough: Delano Burgzorg hits late Boro winner

The stoppage-time defeat at Leicester City in the Baggies' previous Championship game proved to be the final straw in Ryan Mason's short spell as head coach.

A 10th consecutive away loss left him no wiggle room with Albion 18th in the table and they have chosen Ramsay as the man to revive their fortunes in both the short and long term.

Ramsay has plenty of coaching experience in the UK, working as an assistant at Manchester United, no less, under Erik ten Hag, but he proved his worth by moving Stateside and guiding Minnesota to successive fourth-place finishes in the Western Conference of the MLS.

With Minnesota one of the more unglamorous sides in the competition, Albion's hierarchy were impressed how Ramsay had maximised his resources. That is something the Baggies need to do now Premier League parachute payments are a thing of the past.

But however good his achievements in the USA, English football is a different beast and although Ramsay will need no reminder of that, this chaotic 90 minutes reinforced it.

The hosts started brightly in a new five-man defensive line-up, then subsided meekly for a long period and looked to be slipping to a comfortable defeat.

But Price's free-kick changed the momentum and The Hawthorns was rocking when substitute Wallace levelled minutes later.

Yet they could not see the job through for a morale-boosting point and instead a seventh loss in nine Championship games has them looking over their shoulders, seven points clear of the relegation zone, especially with Norwich City, in 22nd, the next visitors to The Hawthorns on Tuesday night.

Middlesbrough have confounded expectations virtually all season, leading fans to wonder if this will be the year they end their Premier League exile stretching back to 2017.

Even Rob Edwards' departure to Wolves in November did not halt their momentum, as successor Kim Hellberg won his opening four games.

There followed a sticky run of one point and no goals from four matches over Christmas and New Year, but a 4-0 thumping of Southampton in their previous league outing put them back in the automatic promotion spots.

They withstood the expected charge from a team playing for a new boss and oozed a quiet confidence as they started to dominate possession.

When Silvera fired home the second just before the hour, the game felt done and Adilson Malanda should have added a third with a header, but West Brom's comeback would have caught the attention of the Sky Blues and Tractor Boys preparing for their Saturday lunchtime games.

At that stage, the game could have gone either way, but up stepped Burgzorg as the ex-Huddersfield man ended a 22-game wait for only his second goal of the season.

If Boro do go on to end that nine-year wait for top-flight football, the importance of this strike will not be under-estimated.

West Bromwich Albion head coach Eric Ramsay said:

"It's very difficult not to feel very disappointed. I wouldn't be human if that wasn't the case and certainly after we got ourselves back into the game.

"You could only see it going one way and the fact that it hasn't makes it incredibly disappointing.

"But coming into this game and irrespective of the outcome, it was going to be information for us as a coaching staff and as players which will give us food for thought as we move into Tuesday.

"I'm very much wrapped in the process that we continue to get better so I'm not going to get drawn into the highs and lows but it's difficult not to get swept up in that."

Middlesbrough head coach Kim Hellberg said:

"The mentality of the players is the key thing here after the crowd goes unbelievably crazy.

"The game was almost done. We were controlling things and they scored a goal from almost nothing.

"They got a lot of energy and have some very good players and then [for us] to come back from that and score a winner in that way [was great].

"It was not a long ball, it was not lucky, it was a top quality goal in the 90th minute and that says everything about this group of lads."

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