Middlesbrough star Hayden Hackney says it’s important Boro don’t get too disheartened by their last two games and instead take confidence from competing well away to two of the division’s best.

Just one point from the games at Burnley and Leeds United have left Boro already looking adrift of the automatic promotion places. But on both occasions - a 1-1 draw at Burnley and the 3-1 loss at Leeds - Boro could have won on another night.

Against the Clarets on Friday they enjoyed the far clearer cut chances across the 90 minutes, and though they found it more difficult against Leeds on Tuesday, they still had a bright 20-minute spell in the second half where, after equalising, they could have easily went on to win.

Reflecting after in an interview with BBC Tees Sport, the Redcar-born star said: “In the last two, I think we have shown we can compete with the highest teams. Although the result hasn’t gone for us today, you can still look at it and think, if we put our chances away in the second half, it could have been a different game.

“It’s now a big gap to the top two, but there are loads of games left and we just have to focus on the next game, and try and win as many games as possible. We’ll see where we finish at the end. We’ll go away from here, take the positives, have a look and see what we can do better and then go again on Saturday.”

Hackney captained the side in both games, with Jonny Howson, Luke Ayling and Darragh Lenihan all missing. A boyhood Boro fan, he admitted the Leeds defeat particularly hurt, as he dissected what went wrong on the night.

He continued: “Losing any game, it does hurt. Especially this one because I think we got ourselves right back in the game. At half-time we spoke about controlling the game a bit more. But we got sloppy at times and it let them back in.

“First half, we did struggle at times to get into the game. We tried to quiet the crowd down a little early doors but didn’t manage and we spoke about that at half-time and trying to get more control of the game.

“We did that and got ourselves back into it, but the goals cost us. We actually had chances to put ourselves ahead. We tried to keep going and keep moving the ball forward, we just got a bit sloppy.”

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