Football League World
·6 February 2026
Middlesbrough must still be laughing at Nottingham Forest right now

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Yahoo sportsFootball League World
·6 February 2026

A deadline day move for Boro's most-prized player was never going to amount to anything, though credit is due to Nottingham Forest for their optimism.
Nottingham Forest's late, late bid for Middlesbrough's Hayden Hackney was never likely to amount to anything, and Boro are likely to still be chuckling to themselves over their audacity.
Now tied at the top of the Championship table with Coventry City and with a four-point buffer between themselves and third place, it's been a successful start to 2026 for Middlesbrough.
Boro may have started the new year with a disappointing 1-0 reversal at Derby County, but five consecutive league wins since then have left them in an excellent position to reclaim a Premier League place for the first time in a decade, come the end of 2025-26.
It was also a reasonably successful January transfer window for them, with Leo Castledine arriving from Chelsea and Finley Munroe from Aston Villa, but the fact that Boro kept hold of one of their most sought-after players will have given the most cheer to supporters, with the news that midfielder Hayden Hackney will be staying with the club until at least the end of this season.

Reports came through on transfer deadline day that Premier League Nottingham Forest had expressed an interest in Hayden Hackney, but that this had been almost immediately rebuffed by Middlesbrough.
On almost every level, this was an offer that was never likely to amount to anything. Hackney is Middlesbrough's most important player, and they were never going to let him go anywhere without - at the very, very least - having an adequate replacement lined up.
More than £200 million could be on the line as a result of promotion to the Premier League, and no amount of money that Forest offered for such an important player was going to be enough to persuade a canny operator like the Boro owner Steve Gibson to sell him. Middlesbrough had no pressing need to sell, and certainly not with a sought-after return to the top flight looking far closer than it has for them in years.

Furthermore, there's nothing about Hackney's profile as a player which indicates that he would have wanted to make a last-minute switch to the Premier League on transfer deadline day. Middlesbrough accepted a £20 million offer from Ipswich Town for him last summer, only for the move to be rejected by Hackney himself. This is a player who is clearly giving considerable thought to the trajectory that he wants his playing career to follow.
It's also known that there is potential interest in him from far bigger clubs than Forest. Former Middlesbrough boss Michael Carrick has had an explosive start to his time as the interim head coach of Manchester United, and he is known to be an admirer of Hackney. Spurs and Fulham have also been linked with a move for the player since the start of this season.
Hackney will already be in no doubt whatsoever that a future in the Premier League is coming, and at 23-years-old he may well feel that there's no rush. He was born just up the road from The Riverside Stadium in Redcar and has been with the club since he was an under-10. And having been with this club in some form or other for almost 15 years, there's a strong chance that achieving promotion to the Premier League with Middlesbrough is the first major ambition of his career that he'll have been wanting to tick off.
There are plenty of footballers who simply want to play at the highest level that they can, and get there as quickly as they can. Playing professional football is a notoriously precarious way to earn a living, and it is understandable that players feel a need to strike while the iron is hot when it comes to moving up through the divisions.
But not all players are necessarily built that way. Some do have loyalty to the area they're from, want to stay where they are happy, or just take their time to make the right decision rather than the quickest one. There is little to nothing in the career history of Hayden Hackney to suggest that he isn't this sort of player, and Middlesbrough supporters will be delighted that this is the case. That a player of this quality is choosing to stay at The Riverside Stadium until at least the end of this season is the best news of an already excellent year that they could have hoped to receive.








































