Hellberg ready for exciting play-off with Saints

Middlesbrough head coach Kim Hellberg is looking forward to two attacking matches with Southampton as Boro's play-off fate was confirmed.

They ended the regular season with a rollercoaster 2-2 draw at Wrexham as their automatic promotion hopes were dashed by Ipswich Town's easy win over QPR.

It all meant that the Teessiders dropped one place from fourth to fifth with the first leg of their semi-final to be played at the Riverside Stadium next Saturday (12:30 BST).

"Two very good games of football probably," Hellberg told BBC Radio Tees.

"Two attack-minded teams that want to play, want to press, two great games of football and I'm looking forward to it."

The draw in north Wales made it four games unbeaten for Boro to end the regular season with 10 goals scored in that spell.

The seven-game winless run that preceded that effectively finished off their hopes of a top-two spot, but Hellberg was pleased with how his side tried everything to get the three points against the Dragons.

"We know we had a little chance to get second, but we gave it a shot," he said.

"When the opponent tries to also be forward thinking, they become good games that we're involved in and it was a good game today.

"At half-time, we understood Ipswich were going to win the game quite easily and we gave it a push. They tried to win it, which opened up a lot of space and we should have done that much, much better.

"That was the disappointing thing today, otherwise a lot of things were very good."