Michael Carrick feels Middlesbrough have played better despite five-goal haul
Posted Saturday, April 15, 2023 by PA
Michael Carrick felt his Middlesbrough side were not at their best despite hitting Norwich for five at the Riverside.
Boro climbed to third in the Championship after emphatically seeing off their promotion rivals 5-1 and closed the gap on second place Sheffield United to five points, though the Blades do have two games in hand.
Cameron Archer got a brace for the hosts with fellow Aston Villa loanee Aaron Ramsey also among the goals, along with Hayden Hackney and the Championship’s top scorer Chuba Akpom, who bagged his 27th league goal of the season.
Carrick said: “I’m delighted with the result. In a strange way, I actually think we’ve played better in other games, but we had that really clinical feel about us tonight and were ruthless.
“I was really, really pleased to see that. It wasn’t a nice performance – it was one where the boys showed how much they wanted it and how tuned in they were.
“You could see how confident they were as well, to create the chances and score the goals.
“Even after the setback of conceding just before half-time, it was great to go and score again and have that mentality. I was really pleased with a lot of things, and with not really being right at our best I didn’t think, it was a terrific win and really important for us.”
“The heavy defeat leaves Norwich eighth in the Championship and although they are only a point behind sixth-placed Blackburn, they’ve played two games more.
Josh Sargent was on target for the visitors, who paid the price for missing early chances and “horrendous” defensive mistakes.
Norwich were angry that the game was not stopped in the build-up to Boro’s second goal when Sam McCallum was down injured, and the Canaries were denied a penalty when Max Aarons appeared to be fouled in the second half.
But David Wagner did not make any excuses for the heavy defeat and felt his side “lost their heads”.
He said: “It was very disappointing. I think we made a lot of horrendous mistakes in front of both goals. We had some good opportunities at 0-0 and at 1-0 down we had an opportunity. We have to take them because goals change games.
“We’ve conceded the second one where Sam McCallum was out of the game and afterwards, to be totally honest, we lost our heads.
“If you make them mistakes you need to stay calm and stay in the game, and we didn’t do that.
“We made it far too easy for Boro with the individual mistakes and we didn’t take our chances. That was the story of the game.
“If you produce mistakes like we’ve done today and you don’t take chances, then you can’t complain about the penalty or that you were unlucky.”
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