CONNOR BARRON has had his Middlesbrough misfortune addressed head on.

It comes just 24 hours after Rangers icon Barry Ferguson demanded a recall for the midfielder – who is yet to play for his loan club.

He made a summer loan switch to the English Championship, but is yet to take to the grass after finding himself out of the squad altogether.

In recent matches, he’s been part of the squad, but is yet to feature.

That had ex-Ibrox skipper and boss Ferguson admitting he’d like the midfielder back in Govan come January and either given a chance to impress under Derek McInnes or sent back out on loan elsewhere.

However, Kim Hellberg has told the former Aberdeen midfielder and team-mate Leo Castledine to keep doing what they are doing on the training ground as they wait patiently for a chance.

The Boro boss admits it is not his job to ‘give people things or be kind’ as he hailed Barron’s ‘exceptional’ approach to his current situation.

As reported by the Northern Echo, the Rangers star was said to have impressed during the international break in a closed-door game with Newcastle.

And speaking to the same publication on the 24-year-old, Hellberg explained: “My job is not to give people things or be kind.

“You have to measure things all the time. Sometimes it’s down to competition, sometimes it’s down to the performance, how they train and all those things.

“For both Connor and Leo, they’ve done a lot of good things lately on the training ground and sometimes for a player it can be down to a little bit of luck.

“Both of them are doing everything they can on the ground.

“That’s sometimes the balance as a coach, I should rest people and I should not rest people, they should come in and they should not come in.

“For everyone, the message is just to keep going. The chance will come if you work hard and the difficult thing for players when you don’t get the minutes is to keep working hard.

“Both Leo and Connor are exceptional in that, and that is important because their chance [of playing] goes up. Then you need to be ready.

“Look at last season, [Alex] Gilbert wasn’t even close but he gets that chance and did very good things. Now it’s the same thing.

“There was no-one thinking Neto [Borges] should play a game here and now look at him.

“It’s important, in tough times, to keep working and take your chance when you get it.”