Middlesbrough suffer significant injury setback - with key defender a doubt for Sunderland fixture

Centre-back Darragh Lenihan has started 14 consecutive league games for Michael Carrick’s side, but missed last weekend’s FA Cup defeat against Brighton with a foot injury.

Lenihan is now set to miss Saturday’s match against Millwall at the Riverside, and is also a doubt for Boro’s trip to Sunderland on Sunday, January 22.

When asked about team news ahead of the Millwall fixture, Carrick said: “There won’t really be any changes from last week, I don’t think at this moment.

"Darragh we’re waiting to see and we’re hopeful on. We hope it’s short-term, but it could be long-term. We’re still investigating that because he has a problem with his foot. We’ll have to wait and see how he goes."

Boro have sold their full allocation of 1,955 allocation tickets for their meeting with Sunderland at the Stadium of Light.

The Teessiders are sitting fifth in the Championship, a point ahead of the Black Cats, after three successive league wins.

And despite the heavy 5-1 defeat against Brighton, Carrick says there won’t be any knee-jerk reactions

“There won’t be any rash decisions after Brighton," the Boro boss added. "We’re calm and I think it was just a one-off. We might make changes - I’m not writing that off - that’s just the beauty of having the strength of squad that we do. But it won’t just be because we got beat off Brighton.

"I won’t be judging any players just based on their performance from that game.”