CHRIS WILDER was delighted to see the strength of the Middlesbrough bench prove a key factor in his side’s 1-0 win over Coventry.

Falorin Balogun delivered the cross for Andraz Sporar’s winner within two minutes of leaving the bench to replace Aaron Connolly, with his fellow substitute, Martin Payero, also making a positive impact during his time on the field.

Balogun joined on a season-long loan from Arsenal earlier this month, and with fellow January signing Riley McGree set to be available for Friday’s FA Cup fourth-round tie at Manchester United after an international break with Australia, Wilder is confident his January transfer business has already made his squad stronger than it was at the start of the month.

The Boro boss said: “We’ve talked about depth from the bench, and now we’ve got game changers in there. We want competition for places, and with Riley (McGree) coming back, as long as we keep everybody fit and healthy, we’ve got that.

“I’m delighted we had the opportunity to make those changes (to the squad). We felt the timing was right (for the substitutions), we needed a spark from somewhere and we certainly got that from Flo.”

Having criticised his players’ attitude in Monday’s 1-0 defeat at Blackburn, Wilder nevertheless opted to stick with the same starting line-up this afternoon.

He accepts his side were not at their free-flowing best as they returned to winning ways, but was nevertheless delighted with the victory that lifted Boro back into the play-off positions.

Wilder said: “It’s a good result. It wasn’t a standout performance – it wasn’t a Forest or a Bournemouth. You look at your own performance, and at times we gave the ball away cheaply, but I’ve got to say that Coventry are right up there in terms of the teams that we’ve played.

“They’re possibly the best team we’ve played. Obviously, Mark has had time to construct a side, and done it from a lot of work and good recruitment, with bright players at the top of the pitch. I thought (Viktor) Gyokeres was as good a centre-forward performance as I’ve seen in this division all season.

“He’s up against Dael (Fry), who we feel is a really good player, but his movement was good and he never stopped running. There was a little bit of edginess about our play and we could never really get into that rhythm Coventry got into because we kept giving the ball away.

“We knew we would be up against a good side. We would have liked the performance to be better, but we didn’t get the result on Monday when we felt our performance in the second half was good enough to get something, and maybe Mark (Robins) will be feeling the same thing I did on Monday. But we’re here to get results and win games of football, and we’ve won a really tight one today.”