Bernie Slaven: Boro dressing room will be like a pressure cooker - and it will get worse

It will be like a pressure cooker inside the Boro dressing room right now. And it will get worse.

It’s the business end of the season now and the pressure and the stakes will rise every week.

The closer Boro get to the finish line, the big prize, then the more the heat gets turned up.

And there will be nerves inside the dressing room. Of course there will.

I know that. I’ve played in three promotion campaigns for Boro, twice under Bruce Rioch and then again under Lennie Lawrence.

In two of those we were leading from the front and the pressure was on because people were trying to catch us and we couldn’t afford a slip.

And in another one we came from behind with a late run and closed in on promotion as others slipped up at the death.

Bernie Slaven climbs the Holgate fence at Ayresome Park to celebrate a goal with a jubilate Paul Kerr.

And I’ve been in the play-offs twice with Boro too, once when we blew the automatic slot on the final day against Leicester and had to pick ourselves up and go again against Bradford and Chelsea.

And another time when we were stuck in the pack and fizzled out a bit then didn’t turn up when we had to play Notts County.

So I know exactly what it will be like in there. The money may be greater nowadays but the modern game and the modern player isn’t that different.

Its the same situation they are in as we were.

And believe me, there will be nerves. There will be anxiety. There will be adrenaline. There will be apprehension.

Players will be talking about the possibility of promotion and the fear of failure and they will be nervous about the games coming up and what might happen, how the team will play, how they will play.

They wouldn’t be human if they didn’t feel all those things.

But is how you deal with the nerves, how you channel them into your game that is important.

And every individual is different and copes in their own particular way.

Some people will feel the heat a lot more and some are cool as a cucumber on the surface.

But whether you are first of sixth - or seventh or eighth even - at this stage the pressure is really on.

Lee Tomlin in action against Leeds

It will make it worse that the table is so tight and even one set-back can see you slip down from an automatic spot down to fourth of fifth and suddenly you go from being the ones to chase to the ones doing the chasing.

There can be big emotional swings with every result, your own and the other teams too.

And when you have a bad result it is torture.

To suddenly get pegged back two or three places after all the hard work to get there can be a real kick in the teeth for a team.

The mood is awful. Everyone is on a downer. Some people take it badly and blame themselves. Some people blame everyone but themselves. A dressing room can be a very dark place then.

And when a team loses in that situation players relive every moment of their game, every mistake.

For me I would go over error time and again. Why did I shoot there? Why didn’t I shoot somewhere else? Why didn’t take a touch? How did I not make that tackle? Why did I not see that run, this defender, that space?

I used to lie awake until three or four or five o’clock in the morning tossing and turning and worrying.

The Boro players would have been like that after the Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday games, I can promise you that.

And Aitor Karanka too. He would have been agonising over those games late into the night, wondering about the shape and the players he picked and blaming himself for the formation and team and running through every possible alternative and why he got it wrong.

But then after beating Millwall and going top again emotion will have soared again.

Kike , Jelle Vossen and Patrick Bamford celebrate

The players will all be buzzing, confidence and morale will go through the roof and the team will be desperate to play the next game and believing they will win it well.

Winning on a day when rivals drop points gives you a massive boost and you start to believe everything is falling into place.

From here on in there will be those emotional swings every week.

That’s not to say the players are nervous wrecks. They’re not.

All players learn to deal with the emotional ups and downs because you have them all your career and most have methods to channel the nerves.

And there are people around you to keep you level headed and focussed. That’s a big part of the manager’s job, keeping the mental strength of individuals and the team as high as possible.

The boss has to be able to spot which individuals need a little boost when the pressure is on and to judge what to say and do to make sure the team is motivated. Bruce Rioch was brilliant at that.

But it’s not just the boss, you need leaders in the group who can do the same job, who can lift the mood and inspire the team on the park.

At this stage it is much about mental strength as playing ability.

Boro have shown this season that they have the character to bounce back from a set-back and that could be important.

Because there will be set-backs in the run in.

It is the teams that can best deal with the pressure that heaps on that will come out on top.