When Hansen joined Middlesbrough from NEC Nijmegen in the summer, in a deal worth around £3.4m, he was tipped to make a major impact in his first season in English football.
Instead, the former Ajax trainee has been a disappointment with the most recent of his three Championship starts having come back in November.
Despite his Boro side struggling to score goals in the last month or so, Hellberg has remained reluctant to turn to Hansen, although the fact the Curacao international has come off the bench in the last two games suggests he is finally beginning to win back the trust of his head coach.
Hansen made a positive impact when he came on a second-half substitute in the draw at Swansea in Boro’s last away game, and while there is every chance he will find himself back on the bench when the Teessiders take on promotion rivals Ipswich Town at Portman Road tomorrow, he appears to have moved himself back in the pecking order in the last few weeks.
“There’s been a big difference from Sontje, I think, in quite a long run,” said Hellberg, whose side head into the weekend sitting in fourth position in the Championship table, three points adrift of second-placed Ipswich. “It’s been good.
“He’s been training in a better way, fighting in a better way. I think all those things are evident. And I think when he’s come on as a substitute, he’s been fiery and has made good movements. It’s good to see him in that way and now we hope for more of the same.”
Hellberg’s reluctance to turn to his substitutes’ bench has been a key talking point during the six-game winless run that has seen Boro drop out of the automatic-promotion positions.
Despite his side struggling in front of goal, Hellberg has stuck with Tommy Conway and David Strelec in the starting line-up and limited Hansen’s time from the substitutes’ bench.
The same is true of teenage striker Cruz Ibeh, who was finally handed a Championship debut when he replaced Conway in the second minute of stoppage time during last weekend’s home defeat to Portsmouth.
Ibeh has been part of the senior squad for most of the season, but despite naming the 17-year-old in a succession of matchday squads, Hellberg did not appear to believe that the youngster was ready for Championship football.
He remains reluctant to ask too much of such an inexperienced player, but insists it is not Ibeh’s talent that is in question, rather his ability to handle the pressure of such a critical stage of the season.
“We’ll see what happens with him [Ibeh],” said Hellberg. “It was good for him to get that one. We’ll see [if there are more appearances]. He’s a talented player, a very good player.
“But he’s also in a very special situation for a young player to come in for the last four games of a big season. But he’s training well, he’s playing a part of it, and we’ll see how many minutes he will play.”
Boro dropped to fifth position in the table when Southampton beat Blackburn Rovers in midweek, their lowest standing since the opening weekend of the season.
The Teessiders were second when Rob Edwards left to join Wolves and were still in the top two when Hellberg was appointed as his successor in November.
From a position where automatic promotion was looking more likely than not, Boro now find themselves needing help from other teams to achieve a top-two finish even if they win their remaining four matches.
However, Hellberg insists he is not getting too hung up on league standings given the potential for plenty more changes between now and the end of the season.
“Of course, you want to be as high up as ever possible,” he said. “The table is the thing that means most in terms of that and it will be the one that we evaluate after the season. But it’s four games to go, so let’s see where we are after the four games.”