Dael Fry and Matt Targett will be assessed over the international break, with the hope that neither of their injuries are too serious, as they played through the pain barrier to help Middlesbrough to victory against Birmingham City.
The pair were both forced off in Saturday’s 2-1 victory over Birmingham at the Riverside, having both been doubts for the game in the first place. Fry missed out altogether due to his troublesome calf in midweek when Boro drew with Leicester City, while Matt Targett was left needing stitches after a nasty tackle in that game.
But particularly after George Edmundson was ruled out after feeling something in training, leaving Boro short of defensive options for the game, both Fry and Targett made themselves available for selection to help the team out.
Caretaker boss Adi Viveash said: “We had a couple of problems and injury doubts before and knew it was a bit of a risk. Dael and Matty Targett, great credit to them. They wanted to go through it for the club and for their team-mates. That’s pretty powerful, especially in sport when you see that magnitude and unity start to move.
“Dael’s is the calf issue. We don’t know how it is. I’ve not spoken to the medical department yet. I don’t know the extent, but obviously he couldn’t continue. With Matt, he took a heavy challenge from Fatawu which should have been a second yellow on Tuesday night. He caught him right on the top of the foot.
“He got stitches and couldn’t train yesterday. If the game had been yesterday, he couldn’t have played. So tremendous respect for him. He had an injection before the game and went out and did a fitness test. We probably thought he had 45 at max in him.
“But he’s such a good player for us and brings such quality, the fact he got through 60 speaks volumes about his character. Hopefully Dael is not too bad. The international break comes and offers the club the chance to assess and we look at that further down the line.”
While Fry and Targett were in-game injury problems that Boro had to deal with, they were without Edmundson and Sontje Hansen on the day too. However, rather than injury, Hansen was just left out of the squad as a selection decision.
Viveash said: “George he was going to be involved today but he felt something in training and that ruled him out. Sontje was just a selection choice based on what we felt we needed on the bench with the defensive injuries.
“We felt we needed another defender and that was just the choice we made. That’s how it is and we felt it was the right thing. The impact that Goerge [McCormick] had from the bench was fantastic, so we feel that was justified.”