JONNY HOWSON is an injury doubt for Middlesbrough’s opening game of the Championship season against Swansea City.

Howson was forced off during the first half of last weekend’s final pre-season friendly against Heerenveen after suffering a foot injury.

The Boro skipper has not been able to take part in full training this week, with Michael Carrick admitting a late decision will be taken over his availability for Saturday’s lunchtime kick-off at the Riverside.

Rav van den Berg also suffered a knock in the latter stages of last weekend’s friendly win, but the Dutch centre-half has been able to resume training this week and will start Saturday’s season opener at the heart of the back four.

“Rav is okay,” said Carrick, who refused to discuss Boro’s ongoing pursuit of Manchester City youngster Micah Hamilton. “With Jonny, we’re still waiting to see a little bit. He got his foot trodden on and there was a bit of a twist, so we’ll make a call on Jonny for the weekend. But Rav’s fine.”

Dael Fry is another player who is a doubt for the weekend’s game, having failed to appear in any of Boro’s domestic pre-season games.

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Fry has suffered a couple of niggles as he continues to recover from the pelvic issue that kept him on the sidelines for the majority of the second half of last season.

“Dael’s been training with us,” said Carrick. “He’s picked up a couple of niggles, purely because of the fact that he’d been out quite a long time I think. It can be quite common when you’ve been out for such a long time that when you get back into training, there’s an adjustment of the body.

“We’ve got to be careful with Dael, we’ve got to be smart. It’s a long season. Darragh (Lenihan) is similar, in some ways, in terms of managing that. They’re two important players for the group and the squad going through the season.

“We’ve got to be smart with that, so whether they’re both involved on Saturday or not, we’ll have to wait and see. We’re certainly looking to manage them both and not get too carried away, too quickly.”

Tommy Smith and Marcus Forss are longer-term absentees, with Carrick not expecting to see either involved in the first-team group until at least the end of the first international break, which comes in early September.

“It’ll be after that first break for those two,” he said. “How soon after that, I don’t want to put too much onto the boys. They’re both in and around on the grass, which is great, but they’ve been out for different periods of time so there’s a lot to take into consideration, to be honest. But it’ll certainly be after the first international break before they’re back.”