STATISTICALLY, their opponents are the most out-of-form team in the whole of the Football League, but George Friend has warned his Middlesbrough team-mates not to underestimate Brighton when the two sides meet at the Amex Stadium tomorrow.

The Seagulls have failed to win any of their last seven league matches, a sequence that has seen them tumble to within three places of the relegation zone and piled increased pressure on former Liverpool centre-half Sami Hyypia as he tackles his first managerial job in English football.

In the last couple of years, Brighton have featured prominently among the clutch of sides challenging for a place in the play-offs, and last term, only a late slump prevented them from finishing in the top six.

Since then, though, they have sold three of last season’s four leading scorers, with the fourth, Andrew Crofts, having been ruled out of the remainder of the season with a knee injury this week.

The £8m sale of Leonardo Ulloa to Leicester City has proved especially disruptive, and while the arrival of Premier League trio Joe Bennett and Gary Gardner (from Aston Villa) and Joao Texeira (from Liverpool) has boosted the quality levels, Brighton are a different proposition to the side that made such a positive impression over the last few seasons.

Middlesbrough’s fortunes appear to be heading in the opposite direction, with this month’s 2-0 win over Fulham making it six unbeaten games in a row and lifting Aitor Karanka’s side to within a point of the Championship summit.

As a result, the Teessiders will head to Brighton with every chance of claiming a fourth away win of the season, but Friend is desperate to guard against complacency.

“It’s been a tough place to go over the last few years, and we shouldn’t imagine it won’t be tough this time even though they’re so far down the league,” said the full-back, who has started all bar one of Boro’s league matches this season. “They’re still a good side.

“It’s a fantastic stadium to play in – I love it there, it’s a lovely new ground. It’s going to be a tough one because it’s the game after the international break, and that’s always hard whoever you play.

“Forget the league position, they’ve still got some good players even though they’ve lost one or two. But we’ll be going there hoping to win and well prepared.”

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This weekend marks the first anniversary of Tony Mowbray’s departure from Middlesbrough, and with the Teessiders riding high in the Championship table, thoughts will inevitably turn to the former skipper’s failure to win promotion despite a number of impressive starts.

Back in 2011-12, Boro were in second position on New Year’s Day, only to fall away markedly in February and March to eventually finish in seventh position.

Twelve months later, and another strong start saw Boro sitting third on Boxing Day, only for another New Year slump to leave them out of the play-off places before the end of February.

The current squad looks much stronger than anything Mowbray was able to call upon, and with a number of players having experienced the disappointment of missing out on promotion under Karanka’s predecessor, Friend can sense a shared determination to ensure there is not another repeat this time around.

“It’s still early days, and in our first season under Tony Mowbray, we were pretty much top of the league at Christmas,” said Friend. “Things seemed pretty firm then, but everyone knows what happened.

“We couldn’t really work out what quite went wrong, but there are people in the squad who were there then and who won’t let it happen again. I feel like one of them.

The Northern Echo: IMPRESSED: Tony Mowbray

“I’ll do everything I can to make sure there’s no repeat of that season, but we need to get into the same position first. We need to get to Christmas and be in a good position, and if we carry on like we are, that’s what’ll happen.”

With only two points separating the current top eight, this season’s Championship looks like being more competitive than ever.

The league has a long-established reputation for being exceptionally difficult to predict, and with no one pulling away at the top or dropping out of contention at the bottom, the battle for a top-six position will be intense.

“I think this season is going to be tighter than last season,” said Karanka. “Last season, we had two teams (Leicester and Burnley) who were on the top for a long time, and three or four teams who were always on the bottom. This season, things are going to be tighter.

“You see teams like Cardiff and Fulham who are down near the bottom at the moment, but I would happily bet that they are not still down there come the end of the season. It is still early, and a lot could change.”