Albert’s where?
Aitor Karanka has three days to decide what to do with Albert Adomah, but the Boro boss will almost certainly be attempting to ignore the issue tomorrow.
Adomah’s submission of a formal transfer request on Thursday elevated last weekend’s events from a dressing-room tiff to a potential crisis, but Karanka will not be attempting to resolve the situation until his side have played at Hillsborough.
As a result, Adomah will be excluded from tomorrow's squad, with either Yanic Wildschut or Cristhian Stuani expected to line up on the right-hand side of Boro’s attacking midfield trio.
Hillsborough hoodoo
There aren’t many grounds in the Championship that Boro wouldn’t fancy visiting, but Hillsborough would have a place on the list as the club’s recent record at the home of Sheffield Wednesday is extremely poor.
Boro have lost six of their last seven games at Hillsborough, four of them without scoring. The Teessiders have only kept two clean sheets there in the last 65 years, with their 3-1 win in September 2009 marking their only away success over Sheffield Wednesday in the last 21 years.
To make matters worse, two of Boro’s last four relegations have occurred at Hillsborough, and it was also where they lost the Coca-Cola Cup final replay in 1997.
Getting the best out of Downing
Stewart Downing will make his 500th senior career appearance this afternoon, but the former England international hasn’t quite made the kind of impact that might have been expected of him since completing a £7m move from West Ham.
He is still awaiting the first goal of his second spell with Boro, and while there have been moments where his class has stood out, he is yet to take a game by the scruff of its neck this term.
Hopefully, that will change this afternoon. He would almost certainly be best served by an extended run in the ‘number ten’ position – which is what he thought he would be getting when he agreed to return to Teesside at the start of the summer – but what would that mean for the in-form Diego Fabbrini?
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