THE key to arresting a slide is often stopping it before it gets to the point where it has the potential to become really damaging. Middlesbrough’s flatlining form hadn’t quite reached that stage prior to Wednesday night’s home game with Norwich City, but had Michael Carrick’s lost again, it would not have been far off.

So, while the performance prior to Borja Sainz’s petulant dismissal might have been some way short of Boro’s best, the final result and improvement against ten men in the final hour was just what the doctor ordered.

A return to play-off contention probably still looks unlikely, for all that the Teessiders have closed to within ten points of the top six, with a game in hand on six of the seven sides directly above them in the table. Looking in the other direction, though, the gap to the relegation places has stretched to nine points, with Boro having climbed back into 12th position. Far from perfect then, but a great deal better than was looking likely when Ashley Barnes scrambled home the opener on Wednesday.

“The big thing is that you don’t want bad runs to go on too long where it starts becoming a problem and you find yourself in trouble,” said Boro skipper Jonny Howson, who ended a three-game injury absence when he returned to the starting side against Norwich. “You want to put a stop to a disappointing run of results, regardless of what you’re fighting for that season.

“When you’re losing, it can impact the atmosphere around the club and you’re coming into training not in a great mood. So, hopefully, that’ll lift everyone’s heads around the place. It’s human nature when you care about something and it’s not going well for you, you are a bit down.

“It’s nice that we’ve got that win, but at the same time, we want to build on it because we don’t want it to be one win, one defeat. We want to try and add consistency which, let’s be honest, over the course of the season we’ve lacked.”

A lack of consistency has been one of Boro’s biggest failings this term. Since embarking on a six-game winning streak in October and November, they have only recorded back-to-back league victories once in their subsequent 19 matches.

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All too often, an improved performance has quickly been followed by a regressive display, so while Wednesday’s win means Saturday’s trip to QPR looks much less pressurised than would have been the case had things not turned around against Norwich, Howson is keen to stress the need to build on Boro’s midweek victory.

“Another win would add a bit more confidence to the group and would make it two wins on the bounce,” he said. “We’re all aware of the situation, but let’s keep going and see what happens.

“We all want to be winning games and we all want to be at the top, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen for you for whatever reason. The game is full of opinions and we’ll all have opinions about that, which is fine, but sometimes it just doesn’t go for you and that’s life.”

Nevertheless, Howson accepts there was a need to steady the ship in midweek, even if, like Carrick, the 35-year-old has seen more than enough in football to know that an absence of panic is a prerequisite to turning around a bad run.

While the external noise ahead of Wednesday’s game might have been linking Boro with a potential relegation battle, Carrick is adamant that, internally, there had been no shift of focus or thoughts.

There had, however, been a doubling down on the need to remain together and committed to the case, attitudes the veteran midfielder feels inevitably come to the fore when things are not going so well.

“Sometimes, you just need to stay level-headed, which isn’t easy because we do care and we do all want success and want to win every game,” said Howson. “When it’s not going right it is frustrating, but that’s life. The flipside is, you do find out who’s with you in moments like this and who are the real characters who want to dig in and keep going. We’ll do that.

“It was nice to get the three points because you don’t want those runs going on for too long, and bigger things being made out of it than sometimes it actually is. So, it was nice, but we want to build on that as well.”