Millwall&#8217;s record signing Josh Coburn: Impressing senior Teesside team-mates including George Saville; Neil Warnock on Bor

“I brought him in to train with the first team and then he just blossomed.”

Neil Warnock is telling NewsAtDen about giving a senior competitive debut to Millwall’s record signing Josh Coburn.

Coburn was eighteen when Warnock brought him on as an 87th-minute substitute for Yannick Bolasie in a 2-1 Championship win at Rotherham United in April 2021.

Despite his young age, Coburn made an instant impact on his senior team-mates, including club captain Jonny Howson, who told Warnock how impressed he was with the centre-forward.

Coburn had no problem going into a senior squad packed with big characters, including former Millwall midfielder George Saville.

"He used to make me smile. He had that effect in the dressing room,” Warnock tells NewsAtDen . “You’re never going to get anything controversial from him. He’s just a level-headed young man who wants to do well at football.

“He’s a good lad and comes from a good family as well.”

Coburn - who is from Bedale, three-quarters of an hour’s drive from the Riverside Stadium - scored his first senior professional goal in just his second game. After coming on in the 65th minute against Sheffield Wednesday on Teesside, Coburn made it 2-1 in a 3-1 victory.

When Coburn scored in a 1-1 draw against West Bromwich Albion in November of the following season, it meant he had four goals in eleven games under Warnock.

It appeared his career at Boro was taking off.

Except, that game against the Baggies was Warnock’s last in charge as he was replaced by Chris Wilder.

Coburn played only fifteen more games that season, scoring twice, although one of them was in a 1-0 win at home to Tottenham Hotspur in the fifth round of the FA Cup.

“I could never understand, even now, why Middlesbrough didn’t play him more,” Warnock says. “Even at the end I thought [Boro boss] Michael Carrick should have played him. When he went to Millwall I thought he should have had a chance [at Boro].

“He’s such a good lad. When he’s brought in you persevere with him. Especially a local lad as well, he loves playing for the club.”

Josh Coburn heads Millwall in front against Watford on March 8, 2025. Image: Millwall FC

Warnock and his assistant at Boro, Kevin Blackwell, and first-team coach, Ronnie Jepson, had recognised Coburn’s raw talent and potential, as well as his good character. Jepson was a striker who played more than 300 games in the Football League. He worked closely with the 6ft3ins Coburn.

“He just fitted in. He revelled in the training,” Warnock says. “I remember saying to Blackie, my assistant, ‘he looks like he’s been here donkey’s years, doesn’t he?’ He looked like a veteran at times.

“His enthusiasm was fabulous. The senior pros like Jonny Howson, the captain, he mentioned to me how well he was training and fitting in. He looked like he had been with us forever, really. He wasn’t nervous at all.

“A good finisher inside the box. He was decent in the air. He wasn’t excellent, but he was decent. But he had a bit of coaching from Jeppo - Jeppo was a centre-forward - and I think he was just jumping a bit early. He wasn’t timing his jumping and that.”

The following season, 2022-23, Boro sent Coburn on loan to Bristol Rovers in League One. He scored on his league debut for Joey Barton’s side, the winner in a 2-1 victory at home to Cambridge United.

Coburn finished the campaign with ten league goals in 27 starts.

He went back to Boro and scored five goals in 21 Championship games, still struggling to become a first-team regular.

Boro decided to send him out on loan again in the summer of 2024, when the Lions signed him on a season-long deal.

Although injures limited him to just fourteen league starts, he scored winners at Derby County, Watford and Sheffield United to help push Millwall into a challenge for the play-offs. He formed an excellent front partnership with Mihailo Ivanovic towards the end of the campaign, as Alex Neil’s Lions just fell short on the final day with their 3-1 defeat to Burnley at Turf Moor.

Meanwhile, Boro finished two points behind Millwall in tenth.

Millwall signed Coburn, 22, in the summer of 2025 in a deal that could be worth close to £5million with add-ons.

“My last game, he scored a great goal at West Brom,” Warnock says. “I played a lot of the young lads when I knew it was my last game. It was good to see him come through.

“I thought it was strange letting him go, but that’s just me.

To find out more background on why Boro let him go, NewsAtDen spoke to Dominic Shaw, who followed Coburn's career on Teesside as Boro writer for The Northern Echo .

NAD: He seemed poised to kick on after successful Bristol Rovers loan spell. How did the following season go for him?

DS: It was a hugely frustrating season for Coburn. Emmanuel Latte Lath finished the campaign as the most in-form and one of the most in-demand strikers in the Championship, but earlier in the season Coburn had been first-choice ahead of the Ivorian.

Coburn started ten straight Championship games for Boro, which coincided with a burst of good form for Michael Carrick's side after a nightmare start to the campaign.

He scored two goals in a draw at Plymouth and looked set to kick on, only to suffer a groin injury which initially halted his momentum and later prematurely ended his season.

It came at the worst possible time for the striker.

NAD: Why did Middlesbrough decide to send him out on loan to Millwall?

DS: With the above in mind, and with Boro having signed Tommy Conway last summer and kept hold of Latte Lath, the thinking was that Coburn would benefit from the opportunity of playing regular football in the Championship, which would have been hard to come by at the Riverside.

Millwall were deemed the ideal fit and a loan spell would give Boro the chance to assess how Coburn fared in a leading role in the Championship before deciding his next move. What Boro didn't think at the time was that Millwall would end up finishing above them in the table!

The forward is fouled during Millwall's 1-0 win against Stoke City on March 15, 2025. Mihailo Ivanovic scored the resulting penalty. Image: Millwall FC

NAD: Coburn mentioned that Millwall wanted to sign him permanently last summer but he opted for a loan move instead. Would Middlesbrough have been happy to sell him last summer?

DS: Had Millwall met Boro's valuation at the time, a permanent sale would have been considered, and the Riverside club would have covered their backs with a sell-on and potential buy-back clause.

But a loan move felt a wiser course of action for Boro and Coburn twelve months ago. At that stage, as discussed above, Boro wanted to see how Coburn fared as a Championship regular, while the striker himself would have still had ambitions at the time of playing his way into Carrick's plans at Boro.

Come January, talks took place over a permanent move but a deal couldn't be agreed. But Boro knew how much Millwall wanted him ahead of the summer window.

NAD: Was there much of a push from the club to keep him this summer? If Carrick had stayed, would he have wanted to keep him?

DS: Coburn made his feelings clear to Boro at the very start of the summer. The striker sat down with Kieran Scott, Boro's head of football, and told of how he felt it was the right time to move on. And that's completely understandable. It felt like a good move for all parties this summer. Carrick staying wouldn't have changed anything. If anything, the change in the dugout might - it was initially felt - result in Coburn getting another chance at Boro.

But the decision had already been made before Rob Edwards' arrival that Coburn would be moving on, which the new head coach accepted and understood.

NAD: Where would he have fallen in the pecking order if he had stayed? Seems like game time was a major factor in his decision to push for a move back to Millwall

DS: Well, this is the potential twist. At the minute, Conway is Boro's only recognised striker, with Latte Lath having left in January. Kelechi Iheanacho joined on loan in the winter window but the former Leicester City striker's spell on Teesside turned into a disaster.

So as things stand, Coburn would have been second-choice and would have likely had quite a significant role to play.

But Boro will prioritise the arrival of a new striker before the transfer deadline, which would have pushed Coburn down to third in the pecking order, and there was also an appreciation that the money on offer was too good to turn down.

NAD: Were fans disappointed to see him go?

DS: I think there's always a disappointment when an academy graduate moves on, and Coburn was liked and respected by the fans, who will never forget his match-winning goal against Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Cup in 2022.