A downbeat Michael Carrick insists his Middlesbrough side have not ‘run out of steam’ as they face a must-win final game of the season at Coventry City.
Boro have managed just one win in their last five Championship matches (a 2-1 Riverside victory over Plymouth) while losing three and drawing one – Saturday’s goalless bore draw at home to Norwich City when they missed a huge opportunity to leapfrog the Sky Blues who lost 1-0 at Luton in the lunchtime kick-off.
Wrapping their home campaign up in the regular season, Boro were uninspiring and lacking in ideas from an attacking perspective as they could only muster a draw against the Canaries, who arrived on Teesside with little but pride to play for.
Carrick looked downbeat as he sat down in his post-match press conference where he had to give the usual messages about taking it to the final day. But, reports our sister title TeessideLive, even the Boro head coach looked like he was struggling to believe it.
“It’s just disappointment because we know what’s at stake,” he said. “We wanted to get the points and we didn’t get them. It’s pretty obvious now what needs to happen. We know where it’s at and we just have to go to Coventry trying to win the game.
“We just couldn’t quite find that bit of spark or moment really. I can’t fault the boys for their effort – they’re out on their feet there at the end trying. We just couldn’t quite find that goal that we needed. We just needed one to drop for us or to find that one moment of quality to create something and put a chance away. When we needed it most, we just couldn’t quite find it today.”
It was another game in which Boro’s attack misfired. While they are the third highest-scorers in the Championship this season, they’ve lacked conviction for much of the second half of the campaign after losing Emmanuel Latte Lath to Atlanta United and Ben Doak to injury.
Retaining belief in his current crop of forwards though, he said: “There’s still been enough through the season to believe and trust the lads that they will find the right moment. We don’t win this game for different reasons. It’s not just an individual thing or an attacking thing.
“It’s a team thing. We all do things to try and create chances for each other. We’ve scored a lot of goals in general this season. Today, we couldn’t find one, but there’s next week. Who knows.”
Asked if he felt his side had run out of steam, Carrick dismissed that notion.
“I don’t think so,” he retorted. “I think it’s just the nature of the season and what’s left to play for. The boys put a lot into it today. There’s a lot of emotional energy and it can affect you in different ways. It just wasn’t to be today unfortunately.”
It was ultimately another day of frustration and missed opportunity for Boro – with this one perhaps even worse than last Monday’s defeat at Sheffield Wednesday because the players took to the pitch this time knowing that Coventry had slipped up in their lunchtime kick-off defeat at Luton Town.
Carrick insisted: “It’s not something we spoke about in the dressing room. Our focus was on us. It’s never a case of this is our day because something has happened [elsewhere]. It’s about what we do. It was in our hands, right now it’s not in our hands. We have to make it happen and today we couldn’t do that.”
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