Steve McClaren believes Middlesbrough are in good hands - though insists the best they can hope for is to match what he achieved while in charge on Teesside.

"Everything is instant now," the former England boss said, "one must come in and one must succeed straight away. I was very, very fortunate at Middlesbrough to have a good chairman in Steve Gibson, a good club, good Academy, who wanted to build and who wanted a five-year plan and longer and it's still going on now.

"That, to me, was key when I first came here. It was to be given time, to have a vision, to have a plan and say 'in five years we'll achieve this' and we did.

"That was the philosophy when I came to Middlesbrough, it was to say 'it will take time', I was very fortunate with the Academy that we had, good kids coming through, but we had time to build."

McClaren believes Boro achieved in his time just about everything a club of their size and resources could.

"Clubs have a success threshold," he told Tyne Tees TV. "We knew we couldn't win the Premier League, we knew we couldn't get into the Champions League, but Europe was a distinct possibility, winning a trophy was a distinct possibility and Steve was fantastic in giving us the resources to be able to do that.

"I believe, yes winning the Carling Cup huge, but success in Europe, taking Middlesbrough into Europe for me was the biggest achievement and my last game was a UEFA Cup final. We've already seen since then with other English teams how difficult it is to progress in that tournament so, yes, I believe where we went and where we took Middlesbrough was towards that success threshold."