Michael Carrick says Boro go into Tuesday’s game against Queens Park Rangers with a fresh mindset.
Boro are aiming to return to winning ways after Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at Swansea City.
Here are some of the key points made by head coach Carrick in his pre-match press conference…
ON DEFENSIVE OPTIONS…
We’ve got two games this week and then we’ve got a bit of a break, so we’ve got to make the best of the situation we’ve got. Jonny (Howson) came back on Saturday very much ahead of schedule and we know what he brings with his experience. He hasn’t done an awful lot of training so we’ll see how that goes. We’ve got a squad of players and we’ve got to find a way.
ON RESPONDING TO SATURDAY…
We’ve got to move on. We know what we need to do to give us a chance of winning games, and we didn’t do that certainly at the start of the game. We’ve got to fix that. It’s important for me and the players to dissect that and understand it between us. The positive was I thought we finished the game particularly well and we looked like we should have got something out of it. We felt that we under-performed but still felt we should have got something from the game, which shows that when we’re decent or half-decent we’ve still got a hell of a chance of winning games. We’ve got to give ourselves a better chance than we did on Saturday.
ON TUESDAY’S GAME…
As ever, the next game is the most important one. We didn’t get what we wanted at all at the weekend and we’ve got another chance on Tuesday, that’s the great thing. We’ve got to get things back in the right direction, for sure. We can definitely improve, and we’re capable of doing that. That’s something we’ve got an opportunity to put into practice, but we’ve prepared and recovered well, and will give it everything we’ve got.
ON THE REVERSE FIXTURE AGAINST QPR…
It was a long time ago and it’s largely two different teams in many ways. Confidence-wise, the way we played on Saturday for that last spell shows that when we do certain things, we give ourselves a much better chance of being in games and winning them. We’ll take more from that than anything.
ON AIMING FOR THE PLAY-OFFS…
It’s a very realistic target. We’re five points away from those positions and it’s very tight, but it’s up to us to do enough to get there. Other teams have got to drop points, but it’s definitely realistic.