Middlesbrough's Morgan Whittaker issues cheeky message directed at Derby County - Rams fans are hitting back | OneFootball

Morgan Whittaker scored the winner for Boro against his first club, and his post-match Instagram reaction brought quite a reaction from Derby fans.

Middlesbrough forward Morgan Whittaker has prompted quite a reaction from Derby County fans after scoring the winning goal against the club at which he started his career on Saturday.

Boro's clash with the Rams on Saturday ended in a 2-1 win for the home side, but it took them a while to get there. Patrick Agyemang gave the visitors the lead inside two minutes, but it took two late goals from Matt Targett and Morgan Whittaker to take the points to the Riverside Stadium and lift Kim Hellberg's side back to second place in the Championship table.

And that winning goal will have felt special to its scorer, since Whittaker started his playing career in the academy at Derby County.

But Whittaker's post-match comment on the goal on social media has sparked quite a response from Rams fans, especially since he had initially celebrated it on the pitch by running straight over to the travelling Derby fans with his hands cupped behind his ears.

"That one was sweet" - Morgan Whittaker reaction to scoring against Derby prompts Rams fan reaction

On Instagram after the match, Whittaker posted a picture of himself at the end of his knee-slide with the caption, "That one was sweet, What a win at the Riverside, the lads were incredible. 3 in 3."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, comments below it had been limited, so Derby fans instead took to the social media platform X in order to express their feelings on his reaction to scoring.

Few of them were complimentary about him in any way whatsoever.

Some questioned what might have happened in the past to prompt this kind of reaction.

While others kept it short but to the point.

And others felt that he might not have meant to score in the first place, and that his goal was actually potentially a cross.

Morgan Whittaker clearly enjoyed beating Derby County - He's burnt his bridges with the Rams

There are some players who refuse to celebrate when they score against a former club, but then there will always be others who choose to celebrate like Morgan Whittaker did.

Whittaker started his playing career in the academy at Derby County, making his debut for them as a substitute in August 2019 in a Carabao Cup match against Barrow. He made his full debut for them in the next round of the competition, and it couldn't have been in much more of a hothouse of an atmosphere, away to Derby's bitter rivals Nottingham Forest, where a 27,000-strong crowd saw Forest win 3-0.

But Whittaker, who was born in Derby, didn't stay with the club for that long. Despite signing a new contract with the Rams in September 2020, the following January he moved on to Swansea City, having made 32 appearances for the club. He then went on to play for Plymouth Argyle before moving to The Riverside Stadium in the summer for a transfer fee of £5 million. He's been a regular starter in the Middlesbrough team this season.

And scoring the winning goal against Derby topped off a very successful week for the winger. This was his third goal in seven days, having also scored Boro's equaliser at Oxford a week earlier and again in their 4-2 home defeat against Coventry City three days later. He's now their top goalscorer in the league this season, with five.

Following a mixed start to the season, Whittaker hit a rich vein of form at the worst possible time for Derby County fans. And while scoring the winning goal against the hometown club at which you started your career might be an extremely emotional moment for the player concerned, in the heat of the moment he may not have given too much thought to it.

But Derby County can do no more than pick themselves up, dust themselves down, and go again. In the Championship, the fixtures come thick and fast, and their next opponents are another local rival, Leicester City, on Tuesday night. The Rams will get their chance for revenge when Derby play Middlesbrough at home on New Year's Day.