Riley McGree scored the only goal of the game to help Middlesbrough produce one of the narrow football scores of the weekend in the Championship. McGree scored in the 25th minute to help Middlesbrough win the first Tees-Wear derby since 2018. The three points helped them climb to 17th on the table while Sunderland remained in the eighth position, two points outside the top six.
Managers Reaction
Middlesbrough’s Chris Wilder: “I’m knackered after that, I think we all are! But we got there in the end. If you look at our eight performances so far, in terms of box-to-box, that was possibly not one of our best. Our objective today had to be a clean sheet and that gave us an opportunity to go and get that win. It was always going to be a tight game. I’ve had a couple of promotions myself and when you come up, you play with that fearless approach and nobody really expects you to do anything in the league above, so you have that freedom. We never really controlled any part of the game, but what we did control was the ball getting kept out of the back of the net.”
Sunderland’s Tony Mowbray: “I thought we had some brilliant opportunities – Pritchard had an amazing chance pretty early on – but I think you have to accept it’s a derby game that was end-to-end. We lost our talisman {Stewart) before kick-off and I think it knocked the stuffing out of us a little bit. I’m still learning about their characters and, at half-time, I talked about needing more personality on the pitch from some of the young players. We could easily have come away with something tonight, but it’s a derby game and when the main goal threat wasn’t on the pitch, that completely changed how we prepared.”
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