TO say Middlesbrough's season has enjoyed its high and low points would be an understatement.

The club's first European campaign and an England cap for local boy Stewart Downing among the former, but those pluses were tempered by the catalogue of injuries that saw an alarming slide in form from Chritmas until April.

One thing, however, has remained constant - Boro are a better side with George Boateng playing.

The statistics don't lie. In the 18 games he missed starting with the Boxing Day defeat at Birmingham City, Boro won just four, including victories over Notts County in the FA Cup and Grazer AK in the UEFA Cup, and lost nine.

His presence adds so much to Steve McClaren's side.

With just a point required yesterday it was perhaps suprising the ultra-cautious McClaren didn't provide support for Boateng and opt for a five-man midfield.

Instead Szilard Nemeth played alongside Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink in attack.

He did have Boateng and Doriva shielding the back four but after Shaun Wright-Phillips had given an early indication that his pace would cause havoc for the Teessiders' defence, it was a question of how long could he keep two men in attack?

Boateng was involved in a battle early on with Claudio Reyna, and then Joey Barton decided to get involved in a confrontation near the centre circle with the Holland international in the 20th minute.

A free-kick ensued for Boro and indirectly led to the opening goal. Slow progress was made further forward by McClaren's side - slow being key to Boro's game plan - and two further free-kicks later Hasselbaink fired in an unstoppable 30-yard free-kick.

With the Teessiders grabbing the all-important advantage, there was little hope of them letting it slip easily.

Boateng reminded Barton of his earlier indiscretion with a thumping aerial challenge that left City's 'hardman' seeing stars.

The former Aston Villa and Coventry midfielder's return has been essential to the Teessiders renaissance over the past six weeks.

When Boateng broke his toe around the turn of the year it was deemed a four week absence at best. However, complications saw that four weeks turned into eight, 12 then 14.

It seems somewhat unlikely that McClaren's men would have let a 4-1 lead slip down at Carrow Road against Norwich with the Holland international sitting in front of the back four.

Yesterday he was doing what he does best. Winning tackles, helping his defence and continually winding up Barton.

After the Mancunian midfielder received a first-half booking for tugging back Nemeth, this appeared to be a good policy.

With half-time approaching Boateng used all his know-how to skip past Sylvain Distin and draw a crude sliding challenge from the Manchester City captain which saw the yellow card brandished again.

Forty-five minutes gone and Boro 45 minutes from a return to the UEFA Cup.

It seemed a very long 45 minutes after Kiki Musampa had brought Stuart Pearce's side level 60 seconds after the restart.

City started the second half like they did the first and the pressure got to Boateng soon after - he was yellow-carded for a foul on goalscorer Musampa.

Boateng's workload suddenly tripled and he would have been thankful to see McClaren replace Nemeth with Downing giving the midfield numerical superiority over their hosts.

However, it was almost lost when just after the hour mark Parlour stupidly slid in on substitute Bradley Wright-Phillips and forget to make contact with the ball.

Luckily for Boro he stayed on. Fortunately Boateng stayed strong while heads were being lost all about him.

He broke up another City attack with a timely overhead on 75 minutes and never allowed the home midfield a second to settle on the ball.

His efforts were particularly annoying to Barton, who was getting a midfield lesson from the Ghana-born star.

He was there again with five minutes left to clear up after Bolo Zenden had blocked Ben Thatcher's goalbound header, and he stayed focused while the game became more bizarre with David James suddenly playing up front.

Even the injury time penalty miss from Robbie Fowler didn't faze him and McClaren's season ended on a high.

The Boro boss knows his side's UEFA Cup place is, to a large part, thanks to Boateng.