Town boss Roy Keane says he was wrong to reveal that he had told some of his players that they were unlikely to play for him again. Keane made the statement prior to the Peterborough Carling Cup tie, prompting a guessing game in the press.
Keane said: "I’ll admit I probably shouldn’t have said that, it came across the wrong way. The point I was trying to make was that I think I have given players a certain amount of chances.
"One or two miss out and obviously one or two people jumped the gun, talking about Jon Stead and Quinner and a load of nonsense was written about that.
"I do believe that there does come a point when you gave to say to a certain player that they’re not part of your plans, but unfortunately the media go off on tangents and mention names and all this carry on, which I think is a bit out of order really.
"Having said that, every day you come to training players have a chance to impress their manager. We had a practice game last week and the reserves had a game during the week, so there’s always an opportunity for players to stake their claim, but a lot of them don’t seem to take it. That’s what happens in football, that’s why players move clubs.”
The Town manager goes into today’s game believing that his side can gain their first league win of the season against one of the division’s current leading lights: "Middlesbrough are a good team and they’ll certainly be in the mix as well at the end of the season.
"I go into every match believing we can get a great result and hopefully that will never change, despite what’s gone on over the last five league games.
"The signs are there that we’re improving, as you’d expect, and we’ll be OK. People need to relax and trust the manager, the players and the staff that we’ll be fine come the end of the season.
Keane feels that his new signings and the loanees he hopes to bring in will add to his team’s goal threat: "I thought at the start of the season that scoring goals wouldn’t be too much of a problem to us, but we’ve come up short in that area, besides the bad goals we’ve given away as well.
"We’ve made it very hard for ourselves, but with these new players coming in and maybe with the addition of one or two loan players in the next week or two, I’m as confident as ever that we’ll be in the mix.”