The Tigers are nicely placed in the Championship play-off race ahead of Friday night’s Boro showdown
Fraizer Campbell believes Joe Gelhardt’s winning goal at Stoke City highlights what a fine player the forward has developed into after sealing a dramatic win for Hull City last weekend.
Gelhardt coolly finished off Mo Belloumi’s precise pass in the 90th minute to seal a 2-1 victory for City, which moved them back to within a point of the top six in seventh place, before dropping down to ninth after Birmingham City and Ipswich Town gained points in their respective games this week.
The goal was Gelhardt’s ninth this season and seventh in his last nine games, with the 23-year-old admitting he’s never felt more confident on a pitch than he does at the moment.
“He’s doing brilliantly at the minute, and we were discussing before saying he wasn’t really involved in the game, but that’s a sign of a quality player,” the ex-City man told Sky Sports.
“Sometimes you’re not involved in the game, but when you do get involved, last kick, last breath, you’ve still got that composure, still got the quality to get the winner for your team. It was a great finish. He could have easily miscontrolled it because the defender was in front of him.”
Campbell, who famously teed up Dean Windass to score the goal that won promotion for City at Wembley in 2008, believes City are going along nicely but wants them to tighten up.
In their 18 games so far, City have conceded 30 goals with only bottom side Sheffield Wednesday shipping more, while no side has allowed more shots on their goal than the Tigers (288), and the former forward wants to see more balance from Sergej Jakirovic’s men.
“One minute it’s doom and gloom, next minute you win a few games, you think you should be going in the play-offs, but it’s got to be realistic, this season has been much better from the start. They’ve lost a couple of games, but they’re still in touching distance of those play-off spots,” he continued.
“He’s (Jakirovic) got a couple of injuries. Oli McBurnie’s been out, which is a big miss for them. He scored a lot of important goals, but I think the main concern for them is conceding so many goals. You can’t keep conceding too many goals.
“There’s got to be a balance that you can’t be constantly thinking about going forward because you’re exposed at the back. I don’t know if it’s your personnel or just consistency of playing next to (somebody you know).
“If me and you are playing next to each other week in, week out, we know how we’re working, you get to learn each other’s roles, but if you’re changing it sometimes for injuries and whatnot, it can be disruptive, but they need to find a way to get the back four, back five, knowing their roles so that the front players can go out and continue scoring the goals, but at least we know that we’re closed off at the back. You can’t do both.”
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