Middlesbrough has only won two of its last nine games.
Michael Carrick admitted his Middlesbrough team needed to start winning more games, but insisted that form was not an issue.
Boro’s 3-2 defeat to Sunderland prevented them from regaining their place in the Championship’s top six. It was a result that exposed Boro’s major concerns all season, as their north-east rivals pulled 14 points ahead of them.
Boro have only won two of their past nine games, threatening to waste their evident talent and miss out on a promotion opportunity. Despite Boro’s terrible form, they are currently outside the top six on goal difference and will travel to automatic promotion-chasing Sheffield United next.
When asked if form was a problem following the Sunderland setback, the Boro manager responded: “You want to win football games, there’s no getting around it. That is what we must do in order to achieve our goals. It’s not a concern, but we do need to win games, and there’s no getting around it.”
Boro’s tendency to shoot themselves in the foot has been a recurring theme throughout this season. Carrick first tried to blame the defeat against Sunderland on bad luck, with the first goal coming off a huge deflection and the winner coming from Ryan Giles’ terrible own goal.
However, all three goals were the result of Boro giving up possession too readily in their own half, a disturbing tendency that has continued throughout the season. The Boro manager admitted at Preston North End last time out that they needed to look at the moments leading up to errors as they attempted to shore up, but to no avail on this occasion.
When pressed on defensive issues following his luck insinuations, the Boro manager responded: “Every goal has moments in the build-up; it’s not always the final action that causes you to concede a goal. We’ve had opportunities, and they’ve had opportunities, but having it go against us as it did tonight is tough.
“Of course, we need to improve.” We clearly need to score more goals than we surrender, but conceding two like that, along with the second at Preston, are goals you can’t plan for. These are moments. We need to handle them better. We need to be a little more cohesive as a unit.”
One of the evening’s major talking points was Carrick’s decision to start George Edmundson over Dael Fry. The Teessider has been mainly brilliant since returning from an extended layoff, and he would undoubtedly have enjoyed this derby encounter. Instead, Edmundson made his first start since his loan from Ipswich Town became permanent.
But it didn’t pay off, as Edmundson had a difficult evening. In addition to far too many bad passes from defence, he didn’t help himself when he misjudged an offside trap and let Wilson Isidor in. When asked why he chose Edmundson over Fry, Carrick simply stated, “We’ve got good players to choose from.”
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