Karanka cool on promotion talk

Middlesbrough head coach Aitor Karanka won’t be entertaining any thoughts of a promotion bid just yet.

Boro secured themselves a fourth Championship victory in five attempts at Blackpool on Saturday to keep them still very interested in the play-off places. It left the visitors thirteenth in the table but now only six points away from the top six.

“We have to think about the next game on Saturday because if we think we are a play-off team or a promotion team it would be wrong,” Karanka told the Evening Gazette. “We need to improve our game still, we always need to be thinking about the next game only.

“It was a very good and important result and another close game where we got three points,” he added. “I wasn’t happy because we didn’t play with the intensity that I want in the first half. We were off the pace compared to the Blackpool players but in the second half we were better.”