Middlesbrough's 'at last' moment leaves them well poised providing they improve one thing

At last - Boro are scoring goals for fun and have motored into the top six. This season is potentially poised to turn into the massive campaign that we always hoped it would be. Even the coveted top two positions are suddenly within reach.

So things are on an upward curve and long may it continue. Emmanuel Latte Lath, Tommy Conway and Finn Azaz are doing what we all believed they could do from the start of the season. Yet it would still do no harm to take a backward step for a moment and consider the situation as a whole.

With 29 goals to their credit from their opening 16 games, Boro are quite clearly the top scoring side not only among the top six, but also in the whole of the Championship. It’s taken a while to prove that Michael Carrick has the best attacking options in the Championship, but at last it’s reaching fruition.

READ MORE: Two Middlesbrough players put forward as epitomising the importance of key transfer strategy

READ MORE: Dan Barlaser reveals the secret behind Middlesbrough's upturn in form ahead of 'important' period

If Boro continue in a similar vein for much of the rest of the season, then achieving automatic promotion should be the target. On the other hand, Boro have conceded 19 goals which is by far the worst record in the top six. OK, it really doesn’t matter if Boro continue shipping the odd goal here and there while they are rampant at the other end of the pitch.

However, even though they are finally doing themselves justice up front, there will come games where it doesn’t always work out for Boro in the opposition penalty area. Teams tend to line up with defensive thoughts in mind when they come to the Riverside. This situation will only intensify in the near future.

There will be some managers suddenly quaking in their boots in their attempts to find a plan to stop Boro scoring a few goals. However, while we are loving every minute of the action at the moment, it would still be useful if Boro could tighten up in defence somewhat. After all, they have conceded ten goals in their last five games.

We know that Carrick sets his side out to pressurize the opposition in the belief that Boro have the capacity to score more goals than they concede. The accent is placed very heavily on winning games as a result of possession-based attacking football. And don’t we enjoy it at the moment.

As long as it is working then fine, but with a testing run of Championship fixtures on the immediate horizon throughout December, there’s every reason to carry out that extra bit of fine tuning to make sure that Boro are as stingy as possible. We haven’t seen a clean sheet now for over a month. A few more clean sheets during the next few weeks will increase the confidence of the back five and hopefully make them stronger still.

What’s in their favour is that Boro are arguably much stronger in defence than they have been since Carrick first arrived at the club. That’s partly because of the addition of valuable new signings, but also because the defensive injury crisis has not hit as hard.

As I have stated previously, the last ditch signing of George Edmundson on loan from Ipswich was almost a stroke of genius. Edmundson is a traditional stopper centre-back who revels in his defensive duties and has added so much to the Boro back line.

If Boro had not signed him then it’s difficult to imagine where the team would be at the moment. They would definitely have conceded more goals and lost more games. While there has been some chopping and changing around Edmundson, much of it enforced, it’s interesting that he has so far remained a permanent fixture in the starting line-up.

The fact that he hasn’t picked up a knock during this opening spell (fingers crossed) has enabled him to establish himself. He must have increased the general level of confidence at the back. With Dael Fry still working his way back in early season we might have expected Rav van den Berg and Matt Clarke to form the central defensive partnership for much of the current campaign.

Yet both have picked up knocks along the way with van den Berg still sidelined. It has helped considerably that Luke Ayling has shown an aptitude to operate comfortably in any position across the back line. Ayling is naturally regarded as an orthodox right-back, from where his occasional forays up the field can create valuable openings.

However, Ayling has proved a vital centre-back replacement when the injuries have bitten hardest, while he has recently shown that he can also do a good job on the left. If Seny Dieng ever picks up a knock, then Boro could try handing Ayling the goalkeeper’s jersey!

Anyway, with Fry back, the bonus is that Boro are numerically better off defensively at the moment than they have been for a long time. This naturally should increase competition for places and hopefully lead to more clean sheets.

There’s a difficult period arriving. Every game in December is going to be a crunch game and Boro must do well in most of them if they want to retain a top six place at the turn of the year. Boro have five clean sheets in the bag so far though their defensive record is still no match for some of the other leading sides such as Burnley, Sheffield United and Leeds.

The way Boro set themselves up on the pitch does create the possibility of conceding goals when the opposition make quick breaks. So things definitely can be improved upon. Last season Boro conceded 62 goals, which was rather high. It was arguably the main reason why Boro failed to reach a play-off spot.

In Carrick’s first season at the helm Boro were only slightly better defensively when conceding 56 times. Tony Pulis always set his side up to be tight defensively. In his two seasons Boro conceded fewer than 50 goals apiece, though on both occasions they were the lowest scorers among the leading sides in the Championship.

The defensive maestro of course in Boro’s recent history was Aitor Karanka. In 2014-15 Boro were cracked open on only 37 occasions, while they did even better in the following season when they were promoted, conceding just 31. Dimi Konstantopoulos recorded 22 clean sheets during the promotion campaign, including a run of nine consecutive shut-outs over Christmas and the New Year.

Of course there was a price to pay because Boro were completely set up and organised from a defensive point of view. This made the art of scoring goals that little bit more difficult. Karanka expected all of his players to get back and defend, which meant that naturally attack-minded players such as Albert Adomah were regularly pulled back into their own penalty area trying to break up opposition attacks.

It was the same for such a wholehearted attacker as Adama Traore. We loved to watch Adama’s penetrating runs which had the opposition at sixes and sevens. Yet he was often expected to start his runs from well inside his own half.

We got our first glimpses of Traore in Boro’s season in the Premier League, when the team failed miserably in their attempts to be competitive. Boro scored a mere 27 goals that season which was never going to be enough to avoid relegation.

Yet, defensively, Karanka’s side had far from the worst record in the top flight. They conceded 53 goals, which was the lowest tally among the bottom ten teams. Hull City, who finished one place above Boro but were also relegated, conceded 80 goals.

What we need is a little bit of Karanka and a lot of Carrick. If Boro can be totally effective at both ends of the pitch then we have every right to expect an exciting finale to the season.