Source: Northern_Echo
Goal hero Kink looking ahead to better times
TARMO KINK is aware of the potential significance of Tuesday's dramatic late double, and is hoping history repeats itself after claiming a similarly breathless brace last season.[LNB] With Middlesbrough losing 1-0 at home to Burnley on Tuesday night, Gordon Strachan's position was looking increasingly perilous as the Championship relegation places beckoned.[LNB] Two sensational long-range strikes from Kink later, though, and the Teessiders were celebrating their second home win in succession and looking forward to this weekend's Riverside encounter with Reading with renewed confidence.[LNB] Strachan is unlikely to have been dismissed had Boro failed to turn things around, but the mood would have grown markedly more mutinous, something Kink was aware of as he lined up his stoppage-time strike.[LNB] I know how important my goals were, said the Estonia international, who arrived in a £650,000 move from Hungarian side Gyori earlier this summer. Everybody could see that it wasn't a perfect five games at the start of the season, so we really needed this win.[LNB] I think we deserved it, because I think Middlesbrough were a much better team than Burnley, but it was important to get the win. It was a very late goal 90 plus three or four minutes I think but the shot went in and that is all that matters.[LNB] I don't think there have been problems. We are playing well, it's just that in lots of games we have been a bit unlucky.[LNB] We have played well in the first half of some games, but not in the second, and that has cost us. But everything seems to be going better now, so we can look positively to the future.[LNB] Few games finish as dramatically as Tuesday's but, remarkably, this week's turnaround is the second Kink has inspired in the space of a year.[LNB] The 24-year-old scored a similar double for his former employers, Gyori, at the end of last season, to secure a victory that helped the unheralded side finish third in the Hungarian top-flight.[LNB] Most Boro supporters would take a third-placed finish at the moment, and while Kink is reluctant to look too far into future, he is hoping Tuesday's win will inspire a reversal of fortunes.[LNB] I have scored important goals before, said the winger. Most of them have come at club level, not for my international team, because Estonia don't score a lot of goals.[LNB] This is one of the most important, but I also remember a really important goal that I scored in Hungary last season.[LNB] It was towards the end of the season and it was a similar game to this.[LNB] We needed to win, but we were 1-0 down, then I scored to make it 1-1. Then, right at the end, I scored again to make it 2-1. That was an important match because it helped us finish third in the table, which was our target all along. Hopefully, we can reach our targets as well.[LNB] For that to happen, Kink feels Boro's players have to maintain the momentum that was generated in the closing stages of Tuesday's game.[LNB] We need to believe in ourselves,[LNB] he said. I thought the performance against Burnley was better than in the last few games.[LNB] I think it's very important that the players have confidence, and you will only get confidence if you are winning games. Let's see what happens now. Hopefully, we will get better and better from here.[LNB] Meanwhile, Boro assistant Gary McAllister is expected to make a decision on his future before the end of the week.[LNB] The Scotsman has been offered the position of number two to new Aston Villa boss Gerard Houllier, and Villa officials are hoping to strike a compromise agreement that will see him leave his current position at Rockliffe Park.[LNB] Strachan will not stand in McAllister's way if he expresses a desire to leave, but the Boro boss is hoping to persuade his former Leeds United team-mate to rebuff Villa's offer and remain on Teesside.[LNB]
