Middlesbrough: 2022 Arsenal, Brighton loanees left Chris Wilder with major promotion 'what if?' | OneFootball

Middlesbrough: 2022 Arsenal, Brighton loanees left Chris Wilder with major promotion 'what if?' | OneFootball

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Football League World

·18 gennaio 2025

Middlesbrough: 2022 Arsenal, Brighton loanees left Chris Wilder with major promotion 'what if?'

Immagine dell'articolo:Middlesbrough: 2022 Arsenal, Brighton loanees left Chris Wilder with major promotion 'what if?'

Boro signed Premier League pair Folarin Balogun and Aaron Connolly on loan in January 2022, but Wilder may wish he handed more minutes to one of them.

Middlesbrough secured loan deals for Premier League centre-forward duo Folarin Balogun and Aaron Connolly in January 2022, as Chris Wilder looked to bolster Boro's promotion bid.


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The Teessiders saw in the new year of 2022 sitting in fifth place in the Championship table, which was a major improvement given he'd taken over at the Riverside Stadium following Neil Warnock's departure in early November 2021, with the club meandering in 14th.

Boro were now very much a team looking upwards rather than downwards come the arrival of the winter window that season, and Wilder wasted little time in making some big additions to his squad, two of which were Premier League strikers.

Brighton & Hove Albion's Aaron Connolly signed on loan for the remainder of the season on 2 January, before Arsenal's Folarin Balogun would follow him to the North East on 12 January, also joining until the end of the season.

However, what would entail over the course of the second half of the campaign would surely leave Wilder, and indeed everyone connected with Middlesbrough Football Club, wondering: 'what if?'.

Chris Wilder hands more Championship opportunities to Aaron Connolly than Folarin Balogun

Immagine dell'articolo:Middlesbrough: 2022 Arsenal, Brighton loanees left Chris Wilder with major promotion 'what if?'

Both players arrived on Teesside with sizeable reputations, as well as possessing obvious potential to be real difference makers for Middlesbrough in the Championship.

Connolly had already made over 40 Premier League appearances for Brighton and scoring a handful of goals in the process, as well as being a full Republic of Ireland international.

As for Balogun, he too had already been given a taste of the Premier League as an Arsenal player, as well as making five Europa League appearances in 2020/21, in which he bagged two goals and an assist.

With just Sporting loanee Andraz Sporar and a teenage Josh Coburn as his natural centre-forward options, the two top-flight youngsters would provide Wilder with some much-needed competition for places in his strike department. But who would be ahead of who in the pecking order?

Well, come the end of the 2021/22 season, it was Connolly who was handed the greater number of Middlesbrough opportunities, with the Irishman making four more starts and playing 299 more minutes of league football than Balogun.

However, he was only able to register two goals in that time, with his first against Derby County coming via a huge deflection, whilst his second, against Birmingham City, perhaps should've been credited as an own-goal instead.

As for Balogun, he was able to find the net three times, whilst also providing a further three assists. Middlesbrough would fall short of a play-off place by five points that season, and had Wilder have given the Arsenal loanee the minutes he awarded to Connolly, perhaps that gap could have been bridged.

Immagine dell'articolo:Middlesbrough: 2022 Arsenal, Brighton loanees left Chris Wilder with major promotion 'what if?'

The following season, Wilder would be sacked by Middlesbrough in early October 2022 with the club sitting in the Championship relegation zone, soon to be replaced by Michael Carrick.

Connolly would spend the first half of the season on loan with Italian Serie B side Venezia, where he would fail to score in five appearances, before heading back out on loan to the second tier with Hull City for the second half of the campaign.

As for Balogun, he'd clearly done enough with his limited opportunities on Teesside to impress French Ligue 1 side Reims, who took him on a season-long loan deal from Arsenal.

In his one season with Les Rouges et Blancs (the Red and Whites), the American international would score 22 times in 39 total appearances for the club, 21 of which came in the league.

That would see him earn a five-year, £35m move to French giants AS Monaco in the summer of 2023, just 18 months after his spell at the Riverside Stadium.

Therefore, a lingering 'what if?' still remains on Teesside over whether Middlesbrough's 2021/22 ill-fated promotion push could've had a different ending had Wilder favoured Balogun more.

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