Middlesbrough boss Aitor Karanka: 'We had to gamble at Fulham'

Middlesbrough manager Aitor Karanka is standing by his costly decision to send goalkeeper Dimitrios Konstantopoulos forward for a late corner in their 4-3 defeat at Fulham.

The Spaniard signalled to his towering Greek stopper to venture into the box in stoppage time, but the Whites quickly regained possession, went on the counter, and netted a winner through Ross McCormack.

However, Karanka insists that he was right to gamble as a draw would have been a setback in their pursuit of automatic promotion to the Premier League.

"Now I am sitting here at the table one point might have been enough but at that time I preferred to take risks so I told him to go," Sky Sports News quotes the Boro boss as saying.

"When you take a risk and you concede a goal the following day you can say that it was because you took a risk. But the problem with not taking a risk is that you will never know what would have happened if you did.

"It will be difficult now because Bournemouth have two more games and one win will be no problem. But our aim was to get into the playoffs. We wanted the playoffs two or three weeks ago."

The result leaves Boro in third place in the Championship table, level on points with second-placed Bournemouth, who have a game in hand.