– Middlesbrough are unbeaten in their last five Championship games
– Sheffield Wednesday have lost 14 of their 19 league away games this season
There is a huge Championship clash at the Riverside Stadium on Monday as Middlebrough bid to keep up their strong finish to the season at the expense of relegation-threatened Sheffield Wednesday.
Boro are 10th but they have kept alive their slim hope of a top-six finish with three wins and two draws in their last five games and they can delay being ruled out of the play-off race a little longer with a home win over 23rd-placed Wednesday.
The Owls raised hopes of escaping relegation with four successive wins in late February and early March, but have since taken just one point from their last three outings.
There are seven teams within five points of them, but Wednesday need to find wins fast with only seven games remaining.
Team news
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Middlesbrough’s Riley McGree and Marcus Forss are out for the rest of the season and Paddy McNair will miss this game.
Rav van den Berg, Hayden Hackney and Tom Glover all have some chance to return but Isaiah Jones is a fresh injury concern.
Wednesday’s Josh Windass, Ian Poveda and Callum Paterson have returned to training but were not able to play against Swansea, while Di’Shon Bernard was injured in the warm-up before that game.
The stats
Both teams have scored in only two of Middlesbrough’s last seven games, while six of Boro’s last seven games have produced under 2.5 goals.
Wednesday have lost five of their last seven away games by at least two goals and have scored only 10 away goals in 19 Championship outings this season.
Both teams have scored in only one of Wednesday’s last nine games on the road.
Prediction
This game is something of a free hit for Wednesday, whose Championship place is far more likely to be decided by their head-to-head showdowns against QPR, Stoke and Blackburn in three of their next four games than in this encounter.
An upset win would be massive for them, of course, and Middlesbrough’s ongoing injury problems give the visitors a glimmer of hope. However, the Owls have been poor on the road all season, scoring only 10 goals in 19 away games.
They burst into life with a run of four straight wins against Millwall, Bristol City, Rotherham and Plymouth but were then blown away by top teams Leeds and Ipswich before scrapping their way to a home point in a 1-1 draw against Swansea on Friday.
Boro have been getting by well enough despite their lengthy injury list and have picked up three wins and two draws in their last five league games, which includes dispatching Wednesday’s relegation rivals QPR and Birmingham.
They showed they are still fighting hard when equalising in the 90th minute through Emmanuel Latte Lath to extend their unbeaten run at Southampton on Friday and while they have not been dominant at the Riverside this season, losing eight times at home, this is a game they should have the ability to win.
