Aitor Karanka will celebrate his first year as the Middlesbrough manager on top of the Championship if his side can make it eight wins from a dozen matches on Saturday. The leaders, Bournemouth, above his team only on goal difference, stand in the way of it being a happy anniversary.
The dismantling of another promotion rival through a couple of goals in each half sent the Teesside club, who were five points above the relegation zone when the Spaniard was appointed last November, bodes well for the challenge. Yet the 41-year-old Karanka, as pragmatic as his Real Madrid mentor, José Mourinho, put the position into context as clinically as his team dealt with the lily-livered Canaries.
“I would like to be in this position in May,” Karanka said. “These kind of games can’t confuse us, thinking that everything is done. We are now in November, we have an international break in two weeks and then after the rest we have lots of games in December and January. I want to keep our feet on the ground.”
Karanka’s fastidious approach to management saw him drop Yanic Wildschut, one of the goalscorers in the win at Rotherham four days earlier, and one of those to benefit, Albert Adomah, teed up Patrick Bamford for a fifth-minute opener: a stooping header from six yards. Just after the half-hour it was 2-0 when the referee, Nigel Miller, awarded a soft penalty for Russell Martin’s upper-body contact with George Friend.
Grant Leadbitter converted for his eighth goal of the season and the result was confirmed midway through the second half, following a sustained period of home pressure, when he ghosted beyond the defence to nod a cute dink from Lee Tomlin over the rooted John Ruddy. The most comprehensive of Boro’s hat-trick of wins over the relegated teams – following tighter affairs with Fulham and Cardiff – was completed when the substitute Wildschut stabbed in late on.
The result left Norwich heading in the other direction and their manager, Neil Adams, lamenting the nature of their display. “We have lost three other games but without a doubt it’s the most disappointed I have been,” he said. “ We had good players out there who didn’t play well at all, we got what we deserved and the manner of the goals we conceded was not good enough.”
