Hellberg's Boro team selection balance with automatics hope and play-off reality

The Boro boss admits it will be ‘difficult’ for his side to finish second now, as they need to win both of their remaining games while relying on Ipswich Town, Millwall and Southampton to slip up.

Far more likely now is that Boro will end up in the play-offs, with Hellberg trying to strike the balance of keeping automatic promotion hopes alive until they’re mathematically impossible to achieve, and also ensuring his side head into the play-offs in the best possible condition.

Making his ambitions for the final two games, starting against Watford at the Riverside on Saturday, clear, Hellberg said: “We need to try to win our game and hopefully that can take it to the last day of the season.

“If you're in it on the last day of the season all things can happen. A lot of things play a big part in who succeeds or not. We're still in it and we will try to get there.”

After ending a seven-game winless run in midweek with the victory over Sheffield Wednesday, part of the thinking is wanting to win the final two games to rebuild confidence and momentum, as much as keeping top-two hopes alive.

However, with so many injuries over recent months meaning certain players have had to play more football than might be ideal, and with Boro looking leggy at times during their win over Sheffield Wednesday, Hellberg admits he’ll be seeking the right balance as far as team selection is concerned.

He said: “There’s a balance you need to have. We will try to take it to the last day, but you don't need to be a mathematician to see that it's very difficult [to finish top two]. So we’ll consider so many different things.

“The schedule is what it is, Sunday to Wednesday, and then we play Saturday early kick-off. This is a very short amount of time where you need to be able to rotate, whatever position we are in.

“Of course, you also need to have different things in your head with rotation because of things that could happen further on. We try to pick the best team to win the game, but in different aspects. So, of course, there will be changes for different reasons.

“You need to try to put everything together and see what is the best way for everyone, and our team, to try to win the game. Also, of course, we do not want to pick up injuries that we could stay away from.

“So it's the risk and different things that need to be considered for how we pick the team. The Ipswich game was the highest output we had in the whole season in terms of many statistics, which you can understand if you looked at that game.

“With then a short amount of time to the Wednesday game, and then a short amount of time now again, there's a lot of balance and trying to make the right decisions in many aspects of it going into this game.”

While Hellberg could therefore make some changes to his starting XI from the side that started against the Owls on Wednesday, he will still put out a side he feels are good enough to win against a Watford side out of form and with nothing to play for.

Watford sit 15th in the Championship and are on a three-match winless run that culminated in Tuesday’s 3-0 loss to West Brom, which all but confirmed their survival under former Boro man James Morrison, despite their two-point deduction.

In that sense, the Hornets look like the ideal opponent for a game of such importance to Boro. But Hellberg warns: “I don't know in this league. It's just trying to win the games. They actually have a top quality squad and a lot of good players. A lot of technical players.

“Watford is a good team. They've been back and forth with how they have done on the pitch, so it’s difficult to know. We will try to beat them.”

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