Blues boss Paul Jewell felt his side had the best chances in their entertaining 0-0 draw at Middlesbrough. The Town manager was pleased with the point against one of the division’s pacesetters.
Jewell said: "I thought we had the better opportunities, if I’m being honest. Certainly in the first half we had two gilt-edged ones - Sonko’s header and Chopra’s volley.
"We were a little bit disappointed to go in 0-0 at half-time. We knew they’d come at us a little bit in the second half and I think there were two teams trying to win a match. How it stayed 0-0 I don’t quite know.”
The Liverpudlian thought his players continued the good work from the 3-0 victory over Coventry earlier in the week: "We tried to take confidence from the performance on Monday, we want to pass the ball, and we did pass the ball, and we moved it, but at times we just didn’t pick the right pass.
"Certainly in the second half, we had opportunities to have a shot and we were trying to walk the ball in a little bit.
"But to come to Middlesbrough, who could have gone top of the league today, and push them all the way, is a good performance.”
Jewell was pleased with recent Boro target Jason Scotland’s performance alongside Michael Chopra up front: "I thought Jason was terrific. He held the ball up and it’s so important if you’re going to play that way that the front two players have got to look after the ball.
"We’ve created good situations, good chances in the first half and certainly situations in the second half, but we probably didn’t make the keeper work hard enough.”
The Trinidadian made way before the end with a knock, but his manager doesn’t expect it to be a significant problem: "He just got a kick, the lad stamped on him accidentally and hopefully he’ll be OK in the morning.”
Boro boss Tony Mowbray's thoughts on the game didn't differ too much from his Town counterpart's view: "I’m sure Paul came up and said he was frustrated as well. It was a game in which they had some chances and I think the way both teams were set up it was going to a little bit end to end.
"I wanted us to play the way we’ve been playing and not worry too much about them. But with the quality of the likes of Bullard, Andrews and Bowyer, all experienced Premier League players, we couldn’t get enough pressure on them to force the issue.
"They had a bit of possession, they created a few chances and yet I felt late on [we had opportunities].
"The boy Chopra had a great opportunity to win the game for them, whether that was a good save or not, and so did Scott McDonald late on when he hit the sidenetting in the six-yard box.
"It could have gone either way, that’s how I felt it was. They’ll be disappointed not to have scored. We could be sitting here talking about a 1-0 win or a 1-0 loss.
"I’ll take the positives of a clean sheet. That’s three clean sheets on the bounce and that’s not a bad platform to give yourself to try and win football matches.”