Delighted with Middlesbrough return

It was great to get on the pitch again against Hull. It was my first game for the first-team since the FA Cup tie with Sheffield United in February and I was happy that my family were there to see it. My mum almost missed it though. She was touch and go whether to come or not as I´ve been on the bench a lot of times before without getting on. In the end she chose to come as it was at Hull, not far from Leeds, where she lives and she was delighted to see me play the last few minutes.

It was hardly the circumstances I would have chosen for my first-team comeback. I was on as cover after David Wheater got sent off and we´d just gone 2-1 down with three minutes to play. But I´ve been short of opportunities of late so it was good to get a chance, however small, to impress.

The match as a whole was a scrappy one. Very little happened until we scored and then it all went off in the last ten minutes. We should have won it. Conceding a minute after we´d scored was terrible. From where I was sitting it didn´t look like a penalty. Wheats seemed to outmuscle Geovanni and we thought it was a fair challenge.

There´s a chance I could get a start against Arsenal at the weekend which would be the biggest game of my career so far. Robert Huth is coming back to fitness though so he may get in ahead of me. We seem to do well against Arsenal at home so hopefully we can repeat that on Saturday. We tend to do well against a lot of the bigger teams really. I´m not quite sure why that is. Maybe we´re a bit more motivated for the big games. People say the way to play against Arsenal is to rough them up a bit but we´re not that sort of team. We don´t put too much emphasis on getting in people´s faces. Our strengths are passing it around teams and creating opportunities that way. Having said that, Arsenal are the masters of playing that game.

Emanuel Pogatetz has been calling on the players to turn things around after our recent slump. When he talks you tend to listen, he´s the kind of person you don´t want to get on the wrong side of. We call him Mad Dog, it´s a pretty apt nickname and even in training he goes full-blooded into every 50/50. He´s totally committed and it´s great to have someone like that in your team, especially for a young side like Middlesbrough. He´s a real talker at the back and that really helps you through games.