SO far, so good. Middlesbrough do not have an advantage to take to the Riverside on Wednesday evening, but after securing a hard-earned goalless draw from yesterday’s first leg of their play-off semi-final with Coventry City at the CBS Arena, Michael Carrick’s side will justifiably feel they are halfway to Wembley.

They will start as strong favourites when the action resumes on Teesside, with yesterday’s result meaning any kind of victory on home soil, whether over 90 minutes or 120, will take them through to the final.

They know they can score on Wednesday as they have found the net in every single one of their home games under Carrick. After yesterday, they can also be confident that they can successfully contain Viktor Gyokeres, who is Coventry’s main goalscoring threat by some distance.

Gyokeres was little more than a bystander for much of this first leg, with Boro’s backline choosing the best possible moment to rediscover the steel and organisation that characterised so many of their performances under Carrick this season. Zack Steffen did not face a single shot on target, such was effectiveness of Boro’s defensive work, and as you always suspected might happen, the laxness of the previous three games disappeared once there was something for the Teessiders to play for.

At the other end, Boro did not really create a glut of chances, but they showed enough, particularly before the break, to suggest they will be a much more threatening proposition back on home soil. Chuba Akpom would have scored had Coventry goalkeeper Ben Wilson not deflected his early effort onto the crossbar, and Boro’s leading scorer went close again with a glanced header wide at the start of the second half.

Beyond that, there was not a great deal of action in Coventry’s 18-yard box, but with a home tie still to come, there did not really have to be. Boro were never really going to win the two-legged tie in the away game, but if things had gone awry, they could easily have lost it. As it is, they have successfully thrust their noses in front.

Middlesbrough’s ability to retain possession was the key to them being able to take the sting out of the passionate atmosphere at Coventry’s sunlit CBS Arena, with the home fans having lost their voice long before the final whistle blew.

The Teessiders dominated the ball all afternoon, with Darragh Lenihan and Paddy McNair both perfectly happy to pass along the backline as Hayden Hackney popped off a series of short-range passes that enabled him to dictate the pace of the game from the heart of Boro’s midfield. Of all the remarkable transformations that have occurred on Teesside in the last 12 months, Hackney’s switch from Scunthorpe loanee struggling to get a game for a side dropping out of the Football League to shortlisted candidate to be Championship Player of the Year is arguably the most remarkable.

With Hackney pulling the strings, Boro had enjoyed 65 per cent of the possession by the midway point of the first half – if anything, their dominance felt even more pronounced than that – and would also have been in the lead had the woodwork not come to Coventry’s rescue when Boro created the first chance of the afternoon in the 13th minute.

A patient passing move ended with Riley McGree slipping Akpom behind the Sky Blues’ backline, but home goalkeeper Wilson was alert to the danger and advanced from his line sharply enough to enable him to deflect Akpom’s effort onto the crossbar.

Wilson made his second important save of the first half 13 minutes before the interval, blocking Isaiah Jones’ shot at the front post after the Boro winger opted to drive a shot goalwards rather than take the better option of squaring across the face of the six-yard box. Wilson deflected the ball around the post, but both Cameron Archer and Akpom were in better shooting positions than Jones.

With McNair heading over from a corner midway through the opening period, Boro were the more threatening of the two sides before the break by a considerable distance, albeit without being able to break the deadlock. Jones had the ball in the net five minutes before the interval, but was flagged offside as he broke onto Akpom’s through ball. Replays suggest it was probably the right call, although it was an extremely tight decision.

At the other end of the field, Steffen barely touched the ball before the break, such was the quality of Boro’s defending and the resultant inability of the Coventry midfield to feed balls into the home side’s talisman, Gyokeres, in the final third.

Whereas Gyokeres had caused a series of problems in the first half of the previous Monday’s league game at the Riverside, he barely had a kick six days later, with McNair and Darragh Lenihan successfully denying him space in and around the 18-yard box.

Liam Kelly put a first-half header over the crossbar, but while Kelly and Brooke Norton-Cuffy both tried their luck with shots from range, their efforts were successfully blocked by Boro’s central defenders.

Coventry scored 26 fewer goals than Boro during the regular Championship season, with their reliance on Gyokeres extremely pronounced, and having successfully shackled the Sweden international yesterday, the Teessiders will surely have one foot in the play-off final if they can do the same thing again on Wednesday night. Akpom might have outscored Gyokeres during the 46-game season, but Boro have a much wider array of goalscoring options than their opponents. Perhaps that will prove crucial in the second leg.

That said, Akpom could still prove the matchwinner of course, and the Championship Player of the Year almost opened the scoring two minutes after the interval yesterday. McGree whipped in an inviting cross from the left, but while Akpom burst across his marker to win a header, his glanced effort flew wide of the far post.

The general pattern of yesterday’s second half was very similar to the first, with Boro keeping Coventry’s attackers at arm’s length as they patiently controlled possession without being able to carve out too many clear-cut chances of their own.

There was a brief scare when Coventry centre-half Callum Doyle strode purposefully towards the penalty area shortly after the hour mark, but the Manchester City loanee, who was impressive while on loan at Sunderland last season, fired harmlessly over the bar.

One of the other key differences between Boro and Coventry is the depth of the two clubs’ squad, particularly when the Teessiders’ injured players are factored back into the equation.

Marcus Forss and Dael Fry returned to the squad yesterday, with the former coming on for Jones as Michael Carrick looked to shake things up in the 68th minute. With a quarter of a game under his belt following his recovery from an ankle injury, it would not be a surprise to see the Finnish forward back in the starting line-up for Wednesday’s second leg.

He didn’t really have an impact in the closing stages yesterday, although Carrick will have been pleased with the diligent way in which he carried out his defensive duties in the final 20 minutes.

With Boro’s midfielders opting not to push too far forward, the Teessiders saw out the closing stages without any alarms. Instead, the excitement will arrive when the action resumes at the Riverside. Roll on Wednesday night.