Will Lankshear has been an absolute revelation since arriving at Middlesbrough over the summer but the in-form striker is currently on pace to just narrowly miss out on Aleksandar Mitrovic’s Championship goal record.

After failing to win promotion last season, it was obvious Boro were crying out for a proper goalscorer. Fans were pleased to see Lankshear, who scored 11 league goals on loan at Oxford United in 2025/26, arrive. But few likely expected him to be this prolific.

The 21-year-old, who is already being talked about for an England call-up, has matched that total in just 12 Championship ties this term and is now just three goals away from matching Boro’s top scorer from last season (Morgan Whittaker, 14).

Will Lankshear on course for 42 Championship goals in 26/27

His latest dominant showing came on Friday night in a textbook Boro display. The Teessiders ran riot against Bolton Wanderers, who simply could not deal with Kim Hellberg’s free-flowing football that ended with Lankshear getting two of the five goals.

The former Tottenham Hotspur man is now well on course to surpass the record for most goals scored by a Boro player in a single season during the Championship and Premier League era. However, if he keeps converting at his current pace, he is projected to be just one goal shy of Mitrovic.

During the 21/22 season, the former Fulham ace managed a staggering 43 goals in 44 games, smashing the Championship-era record, which had previously been held by Ivan Toney (31 in 20/21).

After Bolton, Lankshear has 11 goals in 12 league appearances, giving him a scoring rate of just under 0.92 per match. Should he keep up that pace and play all 46 games of this season, which he should barring injury issues, he will end 2026/27 with 42 goals (42.16 is the actual number).

While that’s not enough to break or match the Championship record, it would completely obliterate the returns of any other Boro player in the modern era.

Chuba Akpom 29 (28 league) has scored the most goals in a single season for Boro during the 21st century and is the only player to surpass the 20-goal mark since Fabrizio Ravanelli in the 1996/97 season (31 in all competitions).

Boro made it into the playoffs during Akpom’s one prolific season with the club and if Lankshear can put up even better numbers this term, fans should start to believe this year is finally the year Boro return to the Premier League.

Middlesbrough’s projected goals conceded may cost them automatic promotion

However, while Middlesbrough’s attack has been blowing sides away this year, there are concerns at the other end. In 12 league ties, the Reds have let in 17 goals, which is just over 1.41 goals a match. Over the course of a 46-game season, that would see Boro finish with 65 goals conceded.

Could they still get into the playoffs conceding so much? Absolutely. But since the second tier was rebranded as the Championship, no team has won automatic promotion while letting in that many. Norwich City (58 in 2010/11) have the highest goals-conceded total of any team to ever finish first or second in the rebranded division.

But it’s not all doom and gloom on the defensive front, with a clear fix for the leaky backline already in place. So far, Boro have only managed two clean sheets this season and it’s probably no coincidence that those two matches (versus QPR and Wolves) are just two of the three games they have started with a backline featuring Neto Borges, Ashley Phillips, Adilson Malanda and Callum Brittain.

Granted, they did concede one against Bolton in the third and final game that defence has played together, but it’s still clearly a much stronger unit than when other names are in the mix.

In turn, their projected goals-conceded tally should hopefully continue to fall to a more acceptable number as the campaign progresses.

Even if that does not happen, history doesn’t always tell the full story. But it’s hard to imagine that many Middlesbrough fans are happy with the number of goals being shipped right now.