Michael Carrick felt the “true character” of his Middlesbrough players was on display as they came from behind to beat Southampton and claim their first league win of the season.
Having failed to win in their opening seven league matches, it would have been easy for Boro’s players to have crumbled when Adam Armstrong opened the scoring at the Riverside Stadium.
Instead, they continued trying to play their football and were rewarded when Riley McGree rifled home an equaliser on the stroke of half-time.
With Southampton fading, Middlesbrough were the better team for most of the second half and they secured the win that lifted them off the foot of the Sky Bet Championship table when Josh Coburn was pulled down by Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Jonny Howson slotting home from the penalty spot.
Carrick said: “It’s hugely positive. I just said to them in the dressing room, I was standing on the touchline in the second half thinking, ‘whatever happens here, I couldn’t ask any more of any of the players’.
“I speak a lot about how strong the group are, but words are words and some people might not believe what I’m saying. But it’s times where you’re tested where you see people’s true characters come out. That’s when you see what people are about and you saw that today.
“We started well, but we went a goal behind and it wouldn’t have come easy for them to put in the performance and the effort that they did.
“You could see the togetherness and the spirit, and that’s what made me most proud. The win came and that was brilliant. I was standing there on the touchline in the second half really proud of them anyway. That’s more powerful than a one-off result.”
Having started the season as one the favourites to win promotion, Boro have underperformed in the first six weeks of the campaign, but Carrick feels his players will emerge stronger because of their struggles.
He said: “I think that will help us moving forward and we’ll be stronger for the way we’ve all stuck together when it hasn’t quite been going so well.
“The supporters are included in that – to see the stadium like that at the end, with everyone enjoying it and celebrating, was great. It’s one game, but it’s not so much the one game and the result, it’s the overall feeling and collective support we feel that is the most important thing.”
Southampton started the season reasonably strongly, but have now suffered four successive defeats, with manager Russell Martin admitting his players are suffering a hangover from last season’s relegation.
Martin said: “The mentality needs to change. We had the game where we wanted it, but then for some reason, we let the game fall out of our grasp and slip. That’s a mentality problem, it’s not a lack of effort, for sure. The players are working extremely hard, but it’s not a quick fix at the club.
“It’s been a tough however long it’s been – certainly a tough year or 18 months. There’s a huge hangover from that, probably bigger than we thought. But we’ll continue to give everything we can and build into a better team and a better club.
“We want to give the fans a team to be proud of, but at the minute, we’re going through a really tough moment. We need the supporters more than ever, but we understand their frustration. We have to keep working, it’s as simple as that.”
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