Karanka showed how to strike it so lucky with new-look attack
AITOR Karanka built extremely strong foundations before leading Boro back to the Premier League six years ago.
Yet the Spanish boss brought in a whole new attack for the 2015-16 campaign before securing a glorious promotion at the second time of asking.
Twelve months earlier Boro had narrowly failed to make the leap into the top flight, losing to Norwich City in the play-off final at Wembley.
The key men up front when Boro missed out included the likes of Patrick Bamford, Jelle Vossen, Kike and Lee Tomlin.
Yet none of these attacking players were part of the side which won promotion the following season.
Instead, Karanka had Cristhian Stuani, David Nugent and Jordan Rhodes to select from in attack, without forgetting the terrific goal contribution of No.10 Gaston Ramirez.
Karanka’s complete change up front should be of particular interest to Chris Wilder who has seen three of last season’s strikers leave Teesside early in the summer.
Loan trio Andraz Sporar, Aaron Connolly and Folarin Balogun, who scored 13 goals between them, have all returned to their parents clubs.
This leaves Wilder virtually starting again up front but he can take heart from the fact Boro’s last successful promotion campaign was bolstered by a new forward line.
It would have been easy for Karanka to believe that second time around was going to be much more difficult after losing on-loan star Bamford.
The 21-year-old had arrived on a season-long loan from Chelsea and proved to be a sensation, scoring 19 goals in all competitions.
Bamford was the club’s outstanding forward that season. He was the main reason why Boro ended up in fourth place in the Championship.
In fact, had Bamford not picked up a niggling ankle injury in the last few weeks of the campaign, the Teessiders might even have gone up automatically.
It would have been great to have had Bamford around for another season but he was recalled by Chelsea, going on to take part in two arguably unsuccessful loan spells with Premier League duo Crystal Palace and Norwich.
While Bamford was the clear top scorer in Boro’s near-miss campaign, Spanish forward Kike netted 11 goals, attacking midfielder Tomlin nine and onloan Belgian forward Vossen eight.
Along with Bamford’s contribution, that represented a loss of 47 goals to the team, though Kike did not leave Teesside until midway through the promotion season.
So, with fans’ expectations extremely high that Boro would finally return to the Premier League in 201516, how did Karanka manage to compensate for such a loss of fire power?
One of the major contributions came on the training ground, where he and his coaches worked hard to make Boro an even tighter unit.
In 2014-15 the Teessiders were comfortably the stingiest team in the Championship, conceding just 37 goals.
The following season Boro were even tighter at the back.
They conceded only 31 goals, which again was the lowest tally in the division.
However it was in a transfer market where Karanka was able to bring about the most significant change.
One of his major signings, if not the best, was in bringing Stewart Downing back home from West Ham for a fee of £5.5m.
Downing was plucked straight out of the Premier League, where he had been performing superbly well for the Hammers.
His return added a special quality to the side, specifically in making them more progressive as an attacking unit.
The two new front men settled in quickly. Stuani, who was signed form Espanyol for £3.6m, finished up top scorer with 11 goals.
That is not a lot, compared to Bamford’s impressive haul, but it was good enough.
In any case, Stuani was a useful acquisition and probably deserved to score more - spending quite a lot of pitch time operating on the right hand side of midfield.
Nugent, who arrived from Leicester for £4m, brought a lot of energy to the attack but was hardly prolific, in netting eight goals.
Boro made a relatively inauspicious start to the season, winning one and drawing two of their opening three games before suffering a 1-0 home defeat to Bristol City.
However, a 3-1 win at Sheffield Wednesday in late August put the team into gear and they went on to win five games in a row.
There was a slight hiccup in October, with defeats at Reading and Cardiff, but then a 3-1 victory at Wolves with late goals from Grant Leadbitter and Downing blew away the cobwebs.
Boro were always automatic promotion hopefuls afterwards.
In fact, between mid-October and mid-January they were almost impossible to beat, recording 11 clean sheets in 12 league games.
Karanka still felt his team needed more. So he made a significant change in the January when ditching his original No.10 and bringing in a new one.
During the summer Karanka had signed Diego Fabbrini on loan from Watford to operate as the No.10.
The Italian had fared reasonably well and had scored six goals.
However, Karanka felt he needed someone extra special in his favourite No.10 role. He completed an agreement with Watford to end Fabbrini’s
season-long loan and returned him to Vicarage Road.
At the same time he snapped up Southampton’s Uruguayan midfielder Gaston Ramirez on loan until the end of the season.
Ramirez had cost the Saints £12m when they signed him from Bologna in 2012 but had been a considered a disappointment at St Mary’s.
He had been moved on to Hull City on loan, but pulled up no trees on Humberside.
So, on paper, it seemed a strange signing. Ramirez arrived on Teesside with a great deal to prove, yet he was a revelation, giving Boro both creativity and quality in the No.10 role and rubber stamping their promotion potential.
The Uruguayan was one of those exciting players that you couldn’t get enough of during his loan spell.
He was both a leader and an entertainer on the pitch.
At the same time, during the January transfer window, Boro brought out the chequebook and spent a whopping £9m to bring in striker Jordan Rhodes from Blackburn.
Rhodes was a prolific goalscorer over three and a half seasons for Blackburn, scoring 85 goals at a rate of slightly better than one in less than every two games.
He at first appeared to be the final piece of the jigsaw, yet he did not receive total pitch time, starting just 13 games in the second half of the campaign and scoring six goals.
Even so, Boro were absolutely unbeatable from mid-March onwards.
An injury-time winner from Nugent at home to Hull City sparked a ten-match unbeaten run which took the club all the way to promotion.
The highlight of the run was arguably a 3-2 success at QPR, where Boro produced an aggressive attacking display and scored goals through Rhodes, Ramirez and mega defender Ben Gibson.
Further injury-time winners proved useful, Adam Forshaw netting a 94th-minute winner at home to Reading and Rhodes grabbing a 91st-minute decider at Bolton.
It left Boro needing to avoid defeat at home to rivals Brighton in their final match, played in front of a capacity 33,806 crowd.
Stuani settled everyone’s nerves by firing Boro in front after 19 minutes. Brighton did equalise through Dale Stephens ten minutes after the restart but Stephens was red-carded four minutes later, and afterwards Boro were never threatened.
The draw was enough to guarantee Boro second place, four points behind champions Burnley.
Brighton ended up in the play-offs where they lost in the semi-finals to Sheffield Wednesday.
Karanka’s successful campaign should be enough to convince Wilder than a new-look attack might make all the difference this season.