Far from being the new Mourinho, Aitor Karanka’s defensive outlook makes him spiritual heir to McLeish

Middlesbrough boast the fourth best defensive records in the Premier League under the Spaniard, but also the worst attack in all of England's four divisions.

Middlesbrough manager Aitor Karanka checks his watch during the match against Stoke City at the Bet3 65 Stadium. Anthony Devlin / Reuters

Jose Mourinho can seem clinical and calculating in his comments. A rare exception came last month. The Manchester United manager complained it was the most defensive Premier League he had known, something he attributed to fewer English managers. The Portuguese can leave it to his audience to join the dots. But if they did, they led to a man who surely was not his intended target: his old assistant.

Aitor Karanka’s Middlesbrough are amassing statistics that amount to categorical proof of defensiveness. Some are signs of competence. Boro’s current back four cost just £2.5 million (Dh11m), yet the promoted club have the fourth-best defensive record in a Premier League awash with money. That is no mean feat. Whatever else he is, Karanka is a supreme defensive organiser.

Yet most are an indictment. Middlesbrough’s league games have produced an average of just 1.81 goals per game. They have scored twice in eight games in 2017. They have gone 433 minutes without a goal. They have had fewest shots and fewest shots on target in the Premier League. They are the lowest scorers in English football.

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With Boro 2-0 down at Stoke City on Saturday, some of their fans chorused: “Aitor Karanka, time to go home.” Perhaps, given chairman Steve Gibson’s usual loyalty to managers, the only place Boro are going is the Championship. They looked shorn of belief, ideas or inspiration, dropping into the bottom three for the first time at a point when relegation rivals seem revitalised.

If Leicester City and Swansea City’s seasons have been compelling dramas and Hull City and Crystal Palace’s have proved unpredictable, the same cannot be said of Boro. A colleague suggested last week that if Middlesbrough were relegated, no one would notice. It was an exaggeration – the impact would be deep and meaningful on Teesside – but the wider world has been sedated by their football.

Perhaps it has spared Karanka scrutiny. The easiest way of diagnosing chaos at a club is to analyse the goals they concede and Boro have let in few. Yet the entire mindset seems so negative that it is unsurprising it is reflected in the tactics.

Karanka criticised the fans in January, claiming they were calling for his side to play long-ball football against West Ham United when they had simply urged players to “attack, attack, attack”. He criticised the board, too, after transfer targets such as Jese Rodriguez, Robert Snodgrass and Bojan Krkic eluded Boro.

Yet he has had plenty to spend. The problem is not poverty. It is a set-up where Alvaro Negredo, the lone striker until he was dropped on Saturday, has had the most thankless task in the division, distanced from his teammates by managerial order. It is a balance between defence and attack that has always been tilted towards the former, but is now angled to an unhealthy extent.

It was an indication of Boro’s safety-first instincts that, despite possessing arguably the finest group of attacking players in the Championship, they secured automatic promotion scoring just 63 goals in 46 league games. Some managers become increasingly conservative, either through age or because they find themselves operating in a league where many rivals boast superior footballers.

The signs, though, are that Karanka was always one of the dullards. Like beauty, boredom can lie in the eye of the beholder, but the evidence his side are boring is becoming overwhelming. A theory is that a man whose relations with his charges, his employers and supporters have seemed fractious at times should not be a manager at all, but a defensive coach.

His grounding as a Uefa Champions League winner’s right-hand man led to obvious questions if he could be the new Mourinho. Rather, however, he looks the Basque Alex McLeish, bringing back memories of a manager whose tedious teams were trapped in tactical straitjackets with men behind the ball but who could not understand suggestions they were defensive.

McLeish’s two spells in the Premier League led to relegation with Birmingham City and the sack at Aston Villa. One way or another, the same fate may beckon for his spiritual heir.

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