After the Busby Babes and Fergie’s Fledglings, how about adding Southgate’s Sprogs? While the continuing success of their admirable academy is key to Middlesbrough’s evolution, the average age of the starting XI that beat Tottenham Hotspur last weekend was only 24 – none was over 27 – and the manager is deliberately building a family atmosphere on Teesside.

Partly through financial necessity, partly through design, a new Middlesbrough is gradually emerging. Gone is the functional football that characterised Steve McClaren’s stint at the Riverside Stadium, while high-earners and pedestrian players have also been eased out of the club. Youthful, dynamic and fresh is the blueprint Gareth Southgate is working to.

Words are being matched by deeds; there is a desire not to block the progress of young players – Rhys Williams, the Wales Under-21 international, was particularly impressive in pre-season – and Middlesbrough’s training ground has been transformed into a haven for education and improvement. Justin Hoyte has only just arrived from Arsenal, but has already “noticed that it is one big happy family here".

That close-knit approach is not accidental. “Youngsters know they will get a chance here, they can see it with their own eyes,” Southgate said. “You can see them progress quickly and they are more adaptable sometimes than more senior players. Their freshness and innocence can lead a team a long way, although there can, of course, be a downside with their lack of experience.

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“As an aging player, I felt a bit out of it anyway, but I’m old enough to have fathered a lot of them now! You would want to treat them like you own children. You do view them like that. You want them to progress as people and as players and if and when they do leave here, to do so as better people with good experience.

“You want to do that with all of them but when you bring a player to your club it’s possibly magnified because you have a bond with them. Anyone still here is because I want them to be. When I talk about the family thing, it doesn’t mean that we won’t fall out, because families do. Sometimes you need to pull them back into line.”

Having filled a bit-part role under Arsene Wenger, the promise of time on the pitch lured Hoyte to Middlesbrough, a prospect that he is relishing. “I didn’t play much last season so this was a great opportunity for regular first-team football,” the full back said. “Gareth Southgate was a major factor and he sold me the club. He is super ambitious.

“I spent a season on-loan at Sunderland, which was great, so going up north wasn’t a problem even though I am a London lad. I have played with a lot of the players in the team through the England Under-21s and I am sure that will help me.

“The manager is his own person and I can’t compare one with another, but there are similarities in the way he and Arsene Wenger want their team to play – a quick, passing team that plays entertaining football. Arsenal are a young, attacking team and I know Middlesbrough like to play in the same way. I like to get forward a lot from right back but my main function is to defend and that is always my first duty.

“This is a different challenge for me but the object is the same, to win every week and to get as high up the league as possible. It wasn’t a difficult decision to come. It was frustrating not to be playing all the time at Arsenal, but I didn’t let it get me down.”