North-East Sport
Lukas hoping to complete the set
10:17am Thursday 16th February 2012
HE has scored one goal with his right foot and one goal with his left - now Middlesbrough striker Lukas Jutkiewicz is looking for a header to complete the set.
Having opened his account with a crisp strike past Sunderland goalkeeper Simon Mignolet in last week's FA Cup fourth-round replay, Jutkiewicz doubled his tally with an even more eye-catching finish in Tuesday's 2-1 league win over Nottingham Forest.
After arriving from Coventry City in a whirlwind few days in the middle of last month, the 22-year-old appears to have settled into life at the Riverside and is beginning to provide the kind of goalscoring threat that Tony Mowbray was desperate to acquire when he shelled out £1.5m to secure his services.
Ironically, Jutkiewicz's aerial ability was one of the key factors that persuaded Mowbray to push through a deal in the January transfer window, and with a glut of games coming up after a rare blank weekend, the Southampton-born striker is confident he will soon have a complete set of strikes to celebrate.
"I just need a header now to round things off," he said. "I'll take my goals any way they come - I'd take them off my backside if necessary - but it's obviously nice to start my career at a new club with a couple of decent goals.
"It's important to contribute to the team, and as a striker, you're obviously going to be judged on your goals. Hopefully, there are plenty more to come."
Tuesday's strike secured a first Championship win since December and helped lift Middlesbrough back up a position to eighth in the table.
The Teessiders are one point off a play-off place and six points adrift of second-placed Southampton, with a game in hand on the south coast side.
Two of their next three matches pit them against teams in the bottom seven, and having spent almost a month on Teeeside since his transfer from the Ricoh Arena, Jutkiewicz is confident there is more than enough quality in the Boro squad to mount a sustained promotion push.
"I've been really impressed with what I've seen and there's certainly enough quality in the dressing room to get promotion," he said. "But you look at the table at the minute and it's so tight.
"It's going to be nip and tuck right to the end. It's impossible to call. All it takes is a run of results at the right time and there are a lot of teams that can put themselves into the middle of it. The most important thing is that we're one of those teams."
This week's win helped keep Boro in the promotion mix, and while they were forced to see out the final 15 minutes with just ten men after Kevin Thomson's dismissal, they successfully retained their composure in the face of some intense provocation.
Nottingham Forest's players appeared determined to get as many of their opponents sent off as possible, and Jutkiewicz has revealed that the gamesmanship began before the game had even started.
"Their players didn't come out the same time as us and made us wait a long time," he said. "It seemed as though they were trying to use every dirty trick to try to put us off. But we had the last laugh by coming away with three points.
"It was a shame to see some of the things that were happening in the game. There were a few things going on that weren't great. Their bench seemed to want to jump up and down about everything.
"They tried to influence the game a bit and maybe not play it in the most professional manner, but it didn't work. They left with nothing and that makes the evening that little bit more satisfactory."
There was a brief moment of concern when Jutkiewicz leapt in pain in front of the dug-outs, but the striker has played down any injury fears.
"I just got caught in exactly the same spot where I'm already recovering from a cut on my ankle," he explained. "It hurt a lot at the time, but I was able to run it off and I'm sure I'll be absolutely fine."