MISFIRING BORO PUL-ING PUNCHES
Tony: We wasted chances
MIDDLESBROUGH boss Tony Pulis bemoaned two missed golden openings as his side were held at Wigan Athletic.
Pulis saw Britt Assombalonga and Ashley Fletcher waste glorious chances.
And he feels the side would not have looked back had they managed to get their noses in front.
“We scored a goal at a good time at Blackburn recently, and we went on to control the game,” he said. “We needed to do that here, but we didn’t.
“They set themselves up really, really solid.
“They changed their shape and got people behind the ball and made it difficult. We needed that goal, which would have opened the game up, and I’m sure we would have gone on from there.”
Assombalonga somehow missed a completely open goal from two yards out.
Fletcher pulled a shot across goal into the path of his strike colleague, but the big man failed to move his feet quickly enough and could only watch in horror as the ball rolled across goal and past the far post.
Then Fletcher had a late effort chalked off for a blatant push on Cedric Kipre prior to sliding the ball past Jamie Jones.
Wigan had chances of their own, with Sam Morsy being denied early on by a brilliant save from Darren Randolph, and Leon Clarke heading a Lee Evans cross just wide in the second period.
Pulis added: “The players have given it everything again. There’s no easy games in this league, coming to Wigan is not easy – not with the results they’ve had here.
“But you need to take your chances, and it’s the same old story. When we do get the really clear goalscoring opportunities, like we did, we’ve got to be scoring them.”
Wigan boss Paul Cook admitted he would have taken the point against high-flying Boro before the game after watching the two sides cancel each other out. The Latics are now five games unbeaten – in- cluding four draws – but saw their buffer over the bottom three cut to just three points.
Nevertheless, Cook feels a point against a Boro side he has tipped to win promotion to the Premier League is not to be sniffed at.
“That was a fair result,” he said. “If someone had offered us a point before the game, we’d have taken it.
“With the calibre of player they have, and the threat they pose, we knew there would be times where we had to defend. The lads did that relatively well, and the game has panned out pretty much how we expected. It was always going to need a flair player to produce a moment of magic to win the game, and neither team were able to do that.
“You know how tough the league is, the teams are so strong, none more so than the team we’ve played today.
“For any team to go five games unbeaten, you’re doing something okay.
“Having said that, obviously we would like some more points on the board.”