Middlesbrough were dramatically better in the second half of their Stoke City win
Middlesbrough head coach Kim Hellberg(Image: PA)
Middlesbrough boss Kim Hellberg admitted he had some choice words for his players at half-time at Stoke City, as he spoke in detail about the art of a half-time team talk.
Boro were trailing 1-0 at the interval at the bet365 Stadium, in what was widely considered the worst half of football from Boro under the Swede. Error-ridden throughout, they were behind to a soft Tomas Rigo goal. The Boro boss looked frustrated on the touchline throughout.
But in a complete second half transformation, they were much-improved and turned the game around through goals from Alan Browne and Tommy Conway to seal three vital points to move back second.
Hellberg made tactical and personnel changes during the half time break, with Leo Castledine and Delano Burgzorg coming on to make the shape more like the 4-2-2-2 he’d started with at Boro.
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But a team talk can often be important too. It hasn’t felt needed often during his short reign at Boro so far, but was Wednesday night one in which the young coach felt the need to rip into his players a bit?
“It’s different,” he said of his team talk policy. “For me it’s more about trying to work out: what the player needs, because it’s not a general thing for everyone.
“Some need maybe a little bit tougher approach, some maybe need a little bit of encouragement. It depends again on what’s been happening.
“I think it was important to be quite tough on the players in the way we played the first 20 minutes. Just that comfortable feeling that is easy to get when you want to be the team that we are.
“Because we have the most ball possession in every game we play, and I think we’ve been brilliant in that. We create so many chances. But when you start to play like we did in the first 20 minutes and just get comfortable with not taking the ball forward, you lose all the things that are good.
“So it was important to tell them, be quite tough, that this was not good enough. I think they knew that anyway. So then it was small adjustments and giving them the chance.
“They felt that they were starting to grow into the game. And I think we had the belief that we were going to turn the game around, and we did.”
Hellberg will hope he doesn’t have to be so stern with his players too often in the remainder of the season. But it appears they now know he has that side in him if he needs it.
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