IT took 92 minutes to arrive, but it was the moment that might have saved Middlesbrough’s season. With the clock having ticked into stoppage time in a game that had been billed as Boro’s day of destiny, Rudy Gestede rose at the back post to meet Alvaro Negredo’s right-wing cross on the edge of the six-yard box.

Had he scored, Boro would have been within touching distance of safety, with a game in hand over a Swansea side that look every bit as devoid of confidence and creativity as the Teessiders. Instead, somehow, he failed to find the target. There are still nine games to go, but it is hard not to feel that Boro’s chances of Premier League survival might have gone the same way as Gestede’s effort.

The five-point gap that separates Boro from Swansea is not an insurmountable margin, but for all Steve Agnew’s upbeat claims of a change in approach and emphasis, this does not look like a side that is capable of claiming three or four victories from the games that remain.

Boro might have spent almost an hour of today’s match playing with two out-and-out strikers alongside each other in attack, but they were still unable to force Swansea goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski into a single meaningful save.

Aitor Karanka’s cautious, safety-first approach has resulted in a conservative mind-set that eschews the taking of risks. Having been instructed not to push too far forward for the last eight months, it is naïve to assume Agnew can suddenly flick a switch and transform his players into carefree attackers.

Similarly, with Karanka having assembled a squad designed to play in a very specific manner, Agnew can justifiably claim that he does not have the personnel to make the kind of difference that will be required to keep Boro in the Premier League.

They remain resolute, organised and hard to break down, but then they have been all of those things from the start of the season. Victor Valdes made one excellent save today, clawing away a Gylfi Sigurdsson effort before it was able to find the top corner, but while Swansea dominated possession for much of the afternoon, they rarely looked like scoring.

The problem was that Boro were no more threatening, and Agnew somehow has to find a way of changing that, preferably ahead of this week’s crucial games with Hull and Burnley. His major problem is that whatever he tries – and there have been positive changes since Karanka’s departure – the deficiencies within the dressing room remain.

So what was different about Boro under Agnew today? Initially, the answer was ‘not a great deal’, although the subtle changes that were apparent were at least designed to make the Teessiders more of an attacking threat.

The major shift from Agnew’s previous game in charge against Manchester United was the switch to a 4-2-3-1 formation, with Stewart Downing starting the game in the hole behind Negredo. The switch enabled Agnew to accommodate Adama Traore in his starting line-up, and the winger’s pace and technical ability with the ball at his feet enabled him to regularly skip past his opponents.

The problem was that Traore’s dribbling tended to take place in his own half. As had regularly been the case under Karanka, Boro struggled to force their way into the final third, with Negredo once again finding himself isolated in the penalty area.

That changed seven minutes before the break, with an ankle injury to Gaston Ramirez forcing a rethink. Agnew could have brought on Cristhian Stuani and stuck with the same formation; instead he introduced Gestede and went to a 4-4-2. Save for the late opportunity that went begging, however, it was hard to say that the switch made Boro markedly more threatening.

The visitors’ only first-half opportunities came to nothing when Negredo and Downing both had shots blocked in the area within 20 seconds of each other, and they didn’t really threaten in the second period until Gestede headed wide.

Valdes was marginally busier at the other end, although a Swansea side lacking injured striker Fernando Llorente were hardly bursting with goalscoring options either.

Valdes turned Jordan Ayew’s 20th-minute effort around the upright, and watched with relative comfort as Martin Olsson and Tom Carroll both fired long-range efforts wide of the target in the first half. Sigurdsson produced flashes of genuine quality, and Luciano Narsingh sporadically threatened to trouble Fabio da Silva down Boro’s left-hand side, but for the main part, Swansea looked every bit as devoid of cutting edge and confidence as their opponents.

The one moment of genuine class from the home side came shortly after the hour mark, and unsurprisingly sprang from the individual brilliance of Sigurdsson.

There appeared to be little on when the Icelander picked up the ball on the left-hand side, but after driving infield towards the penalty area, he fired in a 20-yard effort that would have found the top right-hand corner had Valdes not produced an excellent save to claw the ball to safety.

Alfie Mawson glanced Narsingh’s cross wide of the target shortly after, but while Negredo fired into the side-netting after Gestede briefly threatened to tee him up in the area at the other end, the second half was every bit as devoid of goalmouth incident as the first.

There were a couple of late scares for Boro to endure, with Sigurdsson curling a free-kick from the edge of area just past the post via a deflection off Adam Forshaw, and Marten de Roon heading clear after Mawson angled a header towards goal from the resultant corner.

That looked like being that, until the late drama in the second minute of stoppage time. Negredo’s cross could hardly have been more inviting, and Gestede looked to have angled himself into an ideal position as he pulled off his marker at the back post.

The striker made a clean contact with the ball, but his header flew wide of the left-hand upright, much to the relief of Swansea’s panicked defenders. Unsurprisingly, the reaction of Gestede’s distraught team-mates was rather less upbeat.