Middlesbrough have sacked manager Chris Wilder, with the club 22nd in the Championship.
Wilder, 55, had only been in charge for 11 months after replacing Neil Warnock.
Goalkeeping coach Leo Percovich has been placed in temporary charge, along with coaches Craig Liddle, Lee Cattermole and Mark Tinkler.
Their first match in charge will be Wednesday’s home game against Birmingham City.
Wilder won 18 of his 45 matches as boss at the Riverside, and saw his side just miss out on the play-offs last season after finishing seventh in the table. Boro also enjoyed famous FA Cup successes over both Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.
But Wilder, who led Sheffield United to the Premier League in 2019, was expected to lead a promotion challenge back to the top flight this season, but it has not materialised.
Instead, the Teesside club are in the bottom three and already 13 points behind Norwich City in the second automatic promotion spot.
The promotion specialist brought to Boro
Wilder took over from another former Blades boss Warnock in what many believed to be a coup for Middlesbrough and chairman Steve Gibson last November.
In Wilder, Boro believed they were getting a promotion specialist as they tried to end five years outside the Premier League.
He had achieved the feat with Alfreton Town and Oxford United in non-league, Northampton Town in League Two and then his boyhood Blades as he took them from League One to a ninth-place finish in the Premier League in 2019-20.
When he arrived, Middlesbrough were in 14th place in the Championship, but a run of 19 points out of 21 from late November to mid-January moved Boro up into the play-off places.
He then brought national headlines to Teesside as Boro went on a memorable FA Cup run.
First they knocked Manchester United out 8-7 on penalties following a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford in the fourth round backed by 9,000 travelling supporters, and they then stunned Antonio Conte’s Spurs with an 1-0 extra-time win at the Riverside.
The run ended with a 2-0 defeat by Chelsea in the quarter-finals but those added games had them playing catch-up in the league.
A bad run of two points from five games in April saw them fall out of the top six, before a 4-1 loss at Preston on the final day finally ended their hopes of a play-off spot.
This season, with the side tipped to be among the promotion challengers, Boro have not got going.
It took them six matches to record their first win and they are yet to record successive victories.
Becoming the first team to lose to Coventry all season proved to be the end of Wilder’s reign, with Middlesbrough announcing his departure in a short statement on Monday.
‘Wilder’s departure inevitable’ – Analysis
BBC Radio Tees sports editor Paul Addison
Chris Wilder’s departure from Middlesbrough has had an air of inevitability about it for quite some time.
Boro have had a dreadful start to the season – no-one expected them to be in the relegation zone after 11 games, least of all the manager.
Recruitment has yet again proved to be a major issue.
The club’s two most expensive signings in the transfer window – Marcus Forss and Matthew Hoppe at a combined £6m – were described by Wilder as “development players” who wouldn’t be first-team regulars, which raised many an eyebrow.
At the same time they failed to land several targets and lost arguably their best player in Marcus Tavernier, who signed for Bournemouth.
Speculation linking Wilder with other jobs hasn’t helped either. He was heavily tipped for Burnley when Sean Dyche was sacked towards the end of last season and more recently has been mentioned in the betting for the next Bournemouth manager.
Whatever the truth of the matter, it seems this had an effect on Boro’s results, and a man with an outstanding track record up and down the leagues has now paid the price.
