Boro enjoyed plenty of possession at Nottingham Forest on Saturday, but a failure to convert that possession into scoring opportunities ultimately contributed to a onegoal defeat.
Like Blackpool on Tuesday, Forest spent much of their time playing long balls behind the Middlesbrough defence in an attempt to gain a territorial advantage, and for all that they have established a reputation as a tidy passing team, Billy Davies' side were not afraid to use Dexter Blackstock as a target man.
Boro rarely adopt similar tactics, but with time running out if they are to mount a late push for the play-offs, Wheater admits it might be time for them to start.
A lot of the teams we play seem to just boot it long for their strikers, and maybe part of our problem is that we don't do that enough, said the centre-half. We don't always use that outlet.
Any defender hates balls pumped in behind them I know I do and while the rest of the league seem to do that to us, we don't always look to do it to them. Maybe we need to stop playing nice, pretty football and start pumping the ball in behind teams to give us a platform to start attacking.
Sometimes, we make it a bit too easy by playing nice football in front of defenders.
If you do that all the time, when you finally get a shot, they're in a great position to block it. Maybe we need to start putting it in behind a bit more.
Boro's first opportunity to refine their tactics will come on Saturday, when they entertain a QPR side that had gone nine games without a win before they edged out Doncaster at the weekend.
The Teessiders produced their best performance of the season to win 5-1 at Loftus Road in early December, and with Saturday's defeat having left them four points adrift of the final play-off place, Wheater admits it is imperative they complete only their third double of the season in five days time.
It's getting to the stage where it's now or never, he said. We need to start picking up points. It's getting towards the stage where it's getting too late, so we have to start winning as soon as we can.
The QPR game is massive now because it's no good to keep losing or drawing. It's been a bad week because we'd got a good run going. We lost at Blackpool as well, and we seem to have stopped scoring again. We were scoring goals, but that seems to have dried up a bit. We need to turn that around.
Source: Northern Echo
Source: Northern Echo