Manager Mick McCarthy has confirmed that striker Paul Taylor will keep his place up front at Middlesbrough on Saturday but the Blues boss may be weighing up changes elsewhere in his side with Luke Hyam and new loanee Jonny Williams available after hamstring injuries.
McCarthy seems unlikely to make any defensive switches of personnel with keeper Dean Gerken, right-back and skipper Luke Chambers, left-back Aaron Cresswell and centre-halves Tommy Smith and Christophe Berra a well-established unit.
Berra is set to meet up with the squad at their Middlesbrough hotel this evening having flown back to Scotland from Poland on Thursday after being an unused sub for his national side the previous evening.
The Town boss could bring Hyam back into his three-man central midfield in place of Jay Tabb with Cole Skuse and Paul Green likely to keep their places.
On-loan Wales international Jonny Williams is OK after missing last week’s game having suffered a minor hamstring problem but may start on the bench with McCarthy confirming that his replacement Taylor will keep his place in the front three and having praised Daryl Murphy and Frank Nouble’s performances against Birmingham. Nouble is fine after the hamstring problem which forced him off last week.
Midfielder Anthony Wordsworth came off in Thursday training due to a back problem and if the former Colchester man isn’t fit enough to make the trip 17-year-old second-year scholar Teddy Bishop will travel with the senior squad for the first time, having impressed McCarthy in the U21s on Tuesday.
On-loan right-back Frazer Richardson is ineligible against his parent club, while top scorer David McGoldrick remains on the sidelines with a partial tear to his a medial knee ligament and is unlikely to play again this season.
McCarthy says the Teessiders have changed since Spaniard Aitor Karanka took over following former Town skipper and coach Tony Mowbray’s departure in November: "There’s a new manager, new coaches, probably new players. Looking at them, I think they play slightly differently to how they did.
"Strangely enough, they’re not scoring as many goals but they’re not conceding as many goals. I hate saying it, they haven’t scored for about 13 hours, so that’s the kiss of death, isn’t it?
"But if they score one and we get two it makes no difference. They’re going to score at some stage. They’ve got good players, they’ve got a good squad there.
"Maybe they’ve sacrificed one for the other, being a bit more solid and not as wide open, so consequently haven’t scored as many goals. But they’re not conceding any, they look like they’re tough and hard to beat. We’ll see.”
Boro are without a win in seven matches and haven’t scored in any of those games, and in total have gone 11 hours and 45 minutes of football without finding the net. But — coincidentally like Town - they haven’t conceded in their last four home matches, with their last three all ending in 0-0 draws.
McCarthy says the Teessiders look a more solid side under Karanka, like the Blues boss a former centre-half: "I’ve just had a look at two games that they’ve played and I would say that they look to me like they’ve not been as wide open and expansive as they were.
"Tony Mowbray had a great way of playing and I thought when they started here [in September] we went hunting it, we were getting played around for a while.
"They went 1-0 up but they couldn’t cope with us doing what we were doing, the way we played and we ran them off the park in the end [and Town won 3-1].
"But if they got to grips with that, the way Tony plays, it’s really difficult to play against and it’s very expansive. West Brom were excellent under him.
"But being expansive, you can be wide open and then you’ve got to have good defenders who can cope with it.
"I don’t know their squad, but they don’t look as expansive and that’s probably why they’ve had so many clean sheets. And that may mean you don’t get as many goals as well. If you don’t concede, you don’t get beat, so there’s a good starting point, for me.”
As he faces one of an increasing number of foreign bosses in the Championship, McCarthy says managing abroad appealed to him, having previously spent a brief but enjoyable spell playing in France with Lyon.
"It did, but I really think you have to have a really good grasp of the language. I wouldn’t want to be saying something to a player and have it go through an interpreter.
"The way I am, the way I deal with people, the way I say things to people, it could be misconstrued in a different language by an interpreter.”
Boro keeper Tomas Mejias has been ruled out for a month with a hand injury and Dimi Konstantopoulos or Jason Steele will deputise.
Midfielder Dean Whitehead is suspended having been sent off during last week’s 1-0 defeat at Sheffield Wednesday, while former England centre-half Jonathan Woodgate is out with a calf problem.
Two more central defenders, Seb Hines (thigh) and Daniel Ayala (ankle), are both sidelined, while Rhys Williams has an Achilles’ tendon injury.
Ex-Town full-back and midfielder Jamie Clapham was until recently coaching the first team but following Craig Hignett’s appointment this week has returned to his role of senior development coach in charge of the U21s.
Former Blues skipper Grant Leadbitter joined the Teessiders on a Bosman transfer in the summer of 2012 after leaving Portman Road.
Town academy coach Kieron Dyer was with Middlesbrough during the second half of last season.
The Blues have had the better of Middlesbrough over the years, winning 29 games (27 in the league), drawing 14 (14) and losing 17 (16). The Teessiders are currently 14th in the Championship, five places and eight points behind the Blues.
In September at Portman Road, two goals from David McGoldrick sandwiched a Luke Chambers header as Town came from behind to beat Middlesbrough 3-1.
Albert Adomah put the visitors in front in the 11th minute but McGoldrick lashed in a brilliant equaliser before the break, then in the second half Chambers nodded Town in front before the Blues number 10 sealed the victory in injury time.
Early last season at the Riverside, Boro ran out 2-0 victors via goals from Luke Williams and Mustapha Carayol.
Town, with Paul Jewell still manager, had had the better of it until Williams struck in the 34th minute, Lee Martin and Paul Taylor both forcing Boro keeper Jason Steele into saves.
But they didn’t seriously threaten again until the closing stages when Daryl Murphy, Michael Chopra and Taylor all went close. Boro sub Carayol cemented the home side’s win on the break in injury time.
Saturday’s referee is Iain Williamson from Berkshire, who has shown 51 yellow cards and one red in 19 games so far this season.
Williamson’s most recent Town match was the 3-2 win at Blackpool in November in which he booked only debutant Stephen Hunt.
Squad from: Gerken, Loach, Chambers, Cresswell, Mings, Smith, Berra, Skuse, Hyam, Green, Tabb, Wordsworth, Bishop, Hunt, Anderson, Edwards, Williams, Taylor, Murphy, Nouble, Ebanks-Blake.