EXCUSES ARE SHOT FOR BORO HITMEN

NEIL Warnock has been quick to defend his strikeforce this season, despite an embarrassing paucity of goals.

Britt Assombalonga and Chuba Akpom, the most regular starters, have scored just nine times in a combined 50 appearances whilst Duncan Watmore - who arrived in mid-November - is the joint-top scorer with five.

“They get criticised, strikers, but you have to look at what they get,” said Warnock after last weekend’s unlucky 4-1 defeat at home to Brentford. “They’ve been feeding off scraps, really.”

It’s true; Warnock, like Jonathan Woodgate and Tony Pulis before him, has suffered from a chronic absence of creativity. Not since Adama Traore departed for Wolves in 2018 have the Teessiders fielded a player who could break lines or beat a man.

Thanks to the January signings of Yannick Bolasie, on loan from Everton, and Neeskens Kebano, who joined from Fulham on a similar deal, those troubles are over.

Boro now have proper wingers, with proper pace, delivering proper crosses. Even Traore rarely managed that.

Bolasie, whose £25m move from Crystal Palace to Everton in 2016 was ruined by a serious knee injury, may lack the elastic mobility of seasons past, but the 31-yearold dispatched more quality deliveries against Brentford than the entire Boro team have mustered all season.

“If they’d had our chances, they’d be going back 8-1 winners,” said Warnock - and he wasn’t far wrong. Boro missed two sitters, several half-chances and clocked the exact same number of shots on target as their visitors.

One profligate performance can be attributed to ring rust. But for Assombalonga, Akpom and anyone else paid to fire the bullets for Boro, there is now no handy excuse. It is time to prove it was the ammo, not the trigger, that was faulty.