Kim Hellberg has 'all of the confidence in the world' as Middlesbrough set sights on Birmingham City
Middlesbrough will face Championship rivals Birmingham City on Monday night.
Middlesbrough head coach Kim Hellberg has revealed he has ‘all of the confidence in the world’ as his side aim to break out of an underwhelming trio of results and reignite their bid for the Championship title.
A 2-1 win at Sheffield United earlier this month maintained Boro’s place at the summit as they prepared for what felt like a pivotal trip to title rivals Coventry City. However, it was the Sky Blues that came out on top as a hat-trick from United States international Haji Wright helped Frank Lampard’s men gain the upper hand in the race to the top as they inflicted a 3-1 defeat on Boro.
There has been further frustration for Hellberg and his players since their defeat in the Midlands as they failed to collect maximum points from successive home games against relegation threatened Leicester City and Oxford United over the last week. All eyes now go on Monday night’s visit to Birmingham City and Hellberg has stressed the need to take a balanced view on where his side are at following their recent performances and results.
Speaking at his pre-match press conference, the Boro boss said: “I have all of the confidence in the world. It’s funny with this type of world. We lost one of our last nine games, we drew two games and when you look at them we created a lot of opportunities. The thing is we haven’t been good enough when we are shooting and that’s how we work sometimes.”
Opportunities
The home draws brought frustration from everyone connected with Boro as the dropped points allowed title rivals Coventry City to regain the initiative in the race to top the Championship table. Hellberg’s men created a number of golden opportunities during both games against Oxford and Leicester without being able to land a decisive blow on either of their struggling opponents. However, the Swede has stressed there is hard work going on in training every day as he looks to coax an improvement out of his players in the attacking third.
He said: “It’s the same as always, (we are) trying to react to it, trying to work from it. All the good things, all the things we can improve, we keep moving forward. We have done (overcome defensive opposition), the third most goals in the league since I arrived, I think the games look quite similar. I wouldn’t say Leicester was a low block, I think there are sometimes they defend low like we sometimes do and that’s what we are trying to do. Work on scoring more goals, finding solutions, finding more patterns to develop from it, that’s what we are trying to do every day here. We had four games drawn, we didn’t score for seven hours, we tried to work from it to become better and we did. Now we are doing the same thing, we don’t score enough and we are still creating enough opportunities but we haven’t been efficient enough in those situations.”
Hellberg confirmed George Edmundson and Leo Castledine are both back in training - but stopped short of revealing whether either player will be in contention for Monday night.
Your next Middlesbrough read: 'The frustration was' - Kim Hellberg takes positives despite Middlesbrough’s draw with struggling Oxford