Woodgate set to miss Boro’s Cup excursion to Preston

Fresh from their 2-1 victory at high-flying Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park last Friday, Tony Mowbray takes Boro to Preston North End tonight.

Acting captain Jonathan Woodgate has a hamstring strain and is unlikely to be involved, as is Adam Reach (ankle), but midfielder Grant Leadbitter, who picked up a slight knock at Ewood Park, trained on Sunday and looks set to play.

“Jonathan’s injury isn’t too bad but he thought if he’d carried on it might have become more serious,” said Mowbray. “Hopefully he’ll be okay for the weekend.

“We’ve just had three games in a week and I asked him about it before the first game and he was beaming and said he really felt decent and wanted to play all three games.

“That’s fantastic credit to him. Jonathan and Andre Bikey were outstanding again at Blackburn. That was as good as we’ve seen Woodgate since he came back.

“We did a lot of talking and video work on the problem Blackpool caused us and it’s my job to try to solve problems for the team,” said Mowbray.

“When Woodgate’s at his best, I don’t think there are many strikers in this league can cause us a problem.

“There were some immense performances all over the pitch.

“It was great to see Kevin Thomson get 90 minutes, Josh McEachran showed his quality, Muzzy Carayol was unplayable in flashes and it’s as good as I’ve seen Marvin Emnes play in a while.”

Having won their first Championship game on their travels, Boro head to Deepdale hoping to make it a hat-trick of away wins in the League Cup.

“I never had any fears about our away form,” said Mowbray. “The huge frustration, with total respect to Barnsley and Millwall, is that they were games where we’d expect to get at least something. But we proved on Friday we can cope with tough fixtures and maybe the bigger the game, the more this side will rise to it.”

Preston manager Graham Westley – without Chris Beardsley (hamstring), Lee Trundle (knee) and Lee Holmes (gashed leg) – is out to spring a surprise when Middlesbrough visit Deepdale.

“I am sure Middlesbrough will come here with their front-line team and they are a decent outfit,” he said. “We will have to be right at the top of our game to win it, but win it we can.”

Burnley’s Junior Stanislas (hamstring) is a big doubt for tonight’s trip to Swindon Town.

Defender Michael Duff (Achilles) is unlikely to be rushed back for the game.