AS a head coach, you can attempt to instil confidence into your players as much as you want, but sometimes, they have to see and experience what is possible to truly believe it.

So, while Middlesbrough’s players will start as underdogs when they head to Stamford Bridge for the second leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final tomorrow, despite their 1-0 win in the first leg on Teesside, Michael Carrick can sense a feeling of belief when he looks around his squad.

They were almost a match for Aston Villa at the start of the month, only losing in the third round of the FA Cup through a late deflection. They fully merited their first-leg win over Chelsea, successfully shackling their top-flight opponents with a superb defensive display while also offering a constant threat on the break.

Tomorrow’s game will be a new test, with those two previous matches having taken place at the Riverside, but a pattern has nevertheless been established. Middlesbrough might be in the Championship rather than the top-flight, but when it comes to trading blows with Premier League opposition, all recent evidence suggests they have nothing to fear.

“In any profession, you want to push yourself and see what the best out there looks like,” said Carrick. “For some of the boys, this has been the first time they’ve faced that level of player or team. It’s the first time they’ve come through that and found out if they can cope?

“What does it feel like? How good are they when you come up against them? Well, the boys have coped with that fantastically well and felt like they belong there.

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“Every game is different, so just because we have had two good games against Villa and Chelsea, it doesn’t mean that we are there. That is not the case, but the sense of feeling about what is possible, we take a lot of strength from that.”

Carrick won three League Cups as a player with Manchester United, and was regarded as one of the best midfielders in the world as he played for his country and won Premier League titles and a Champions League trophy.

At the start of his career, though, even he needed a couple of statement wins against higher-ranked opponents to convince him that he belonged at the highest level.

“When I was at West Ham, I remember we played Man United away in the FA Cup when (Paolo) Di Canio scored and (Fabien) Barthez was putting his hand up for offside. We ended up winning 1-0. That was only the fourth round of the cup, but at that stage, it was the biggest game I’d played in against a level of opposition that was higher up the standings than we were.

“Certainly, for the younger players, it’s all about that sense of seeing what's out there, testing yourself and seeing if can you cope. And that extra buzz of being in positions that you maybe didn't think you could get to.

“But it's not just the younger players. Some of the, I say older players in the nicest possible way, for them it's a massive opportunity. It's a massive opportunity for me - and I'm an old man compared to them.”

Getting to a major final in his first full season as a head coach would be a massive feather in Carrick’s cap, further cementing the impression that he is a Premier League manager-in-waiting, either with Boro or without them if they fail to win promotion this term. Not, however, that he is heading into tomorrow’s decider thinking about his career progression.

“It’s not about me, honestly,” he said. “I’m here to prepare. I'm here to prepare the boys as best as we can and have a clear plan, with the belief of going there to get the right result.

“I don't see it as a big challenge for me personally in terms of, can I succeed, can I not, I really don’t. It’s about the team and the squad, and actually trying to do something or getting through to the next round of the cup.”

That next round, of course, would be the final, and a meeting with either Liverpool or Fulham at Wembley on February 25. Reaching the League Cup final, 20 years after Boro’s unforgettable triumph in the Millennium Stadium, would be incredible, but it would also provide incontrovertible proof of what Carrick and his players are capable of. Whatever happens tomorrow, it needs to form part of a wider journey rather than act as an end point.

“Is it a defining moment? I don’t see it that way for us personally or as a team,” said Carrick. “We know what it would mean to get through and have some success. I am not playing that down at all. But I don't know what will happen going into this game where it could swing both ways. Hopefully, there is more to come after this, and we can also achieve success in different ways.”