TOMMY SMITH and Marcus Forss will not be available for the start of Middlesbrough’s season, with Michael Carrick also revealing Alex Bangura suffered an injury issue during last week’s training break in Portugal.

Smith and Forss went into the summer carrying injuries sustained last season, and while they continue to progress with their respective rehabilitation programmes, they are yet to return to training.

They are not expected to feature in any of Boro’s pre-season games and will not be available for next month’s season-opener against Swansea City.

However, their fellow injury victim, Darragh Lenihan, is back in training, and while the centre-half was not involved in this afternoon’s friendly win over Bolton Wanderers at Bishop Auckland, he should be able to return in the next couple of weeks in order to put himself into contention for a place in the squad to face Swansea.

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“Darragh’s been training with us for the last few weeks,” said Carrick. “And we’re hoping to get him involved over the next week or so. We’re hoping to get him involved with the games, and if everything goes to plan, he should be okay for the start of the season.

“We’re just being patient with him because he’s been out a long time. We’re taking it step by step. Tommy and Marcus are a bit further down the line, we’re not expecting to see them for the start of the season. It won’t be any time soon for them really.”

Bangura’s injury, which could potentially be serious, is still being assessed, although the full-back would not have been involved in today’s game at Heritage Park anyway as his partner has just given birth to their first child.

“Alex had an issue when we were in Portugal, and we’re working through that to see where he’s at,” said Carrick. “He also had a baby last week, which was great for him so that was another reason why he wasn’t here. We’re having a look at the extent of the issue, and we’ll try to get him back as soon as we can.”

Sol Brynn was another absentee as Boro won their opening domestic friendly, but the goalkeeper is not nursing anything serious and could feature in Wednesday’s warm-up game at Gateshead.

“Sol’s alright,” said Carrick. “He just had a niggle in his foot when we were away in Portugal, but he’s only days away from being back.”

Boro ran out 3-0 winners over Bolton, with all of their goals coming from second-half substitutes. Emmanuel Latte Lath slotted home the opener within six minutes of coming onto the field, Sonny Finch volleyed home a second from close range and summer signing Delano Burgzorg completed the scoring from the penalty spot.

“It was a good afternoon,” said Carrick. “I thought it was a good game. Bolton are a good team, we found that out last season when we played them in the cup, and that was part of the reason why we wanted to play them again.

“They’ll feel like they should be playing in our league next season, and it was a good workout for us. It was probably what you’d expect. There’s things for us to work on, and we’re learning all the time – learning about the group and the lads coming in. We played some good football at times, looked dangerous and scored some goals, so I’m really happy with the day.”