HE finished his debut as Middlesbrough’s penalty shoot-out king – now Andy Lonergan wants to get himself to a position where he can challenge for the club’s number one spot on a regular basis.

Having cancelled his previous contract at Leeds United by mutual consent, Lonergan joined Boro as a free agent at the start of the month, but a disrupted summer means he freely admits he is not yet at peak fitness.

While Dimi Konstantopoulos was named on the substitutes’ bench for Boro’s opening three league games, Lonergan was handed the goalkeeping gloves as the Teessiders kicked off their Carabao Cup campaign against Notts County on Tuesday, and responded by making shoot-out saves from Jon Stead and Dan Jones.

It remains to be seen whether he is promoted to the bench for Saturday’s Championship trip to Bristol City, but while Darren Randolph remains firmly established as Boro’s number one, Lonergan is adamant he has not moved to Teesside simply to make up the numbers.

“The aim is to challenge for the number one jersey, of course it is,” said the 34-year-old, whose well-travelled career includes a brief loan spell at Darlington. “I’ve got Dimi in front of me I presume because he sits on the bench in the league, and I’ve got Randz (Randolph) in front of me too.

“He’s a fantastic keeper. In my opinion, along with Scott Carson, he is probably the best in the league. So I know my role, but I’m also ambitious as well.

“I’ve not really played since January and didn’t have a pre-season, so there’s obviously that bit of ring rust I need to get rid of. I’ve only trained for seven or eight days, but as a goalkeeper you can’t be over-anxious or chase things, because that’s when mistakes happen.”

Having accepted that his time at Elland Road was at an end, Lonergan received a number of offers from clubs in the Football League.

Middlesbrough’s interest was always the most appealing though, particularly as it came via the club’s goalkeeping coach, Jonathan Gould, who once battled Lonergan for a starting spot at Preston.

“I ended my contract with Leeds by mutual consent because it just wasn’t working, and that’s fine, there were no hard feelings,” he said. “In the first week I had a lot of offers, but there wasn’t one thing that got me excited. I wanted a challenge. I don’t just want to go through the motions – and then I got the call from Boro.

“I know Gouldy well – we fought it out when I was just a young lad. Another Championship club made me an offer, but when Boro came in, there was never a question of which one I was choosing.

“I’ve loved it here. It’s the easiest dressing room I’ve ever been in. They’re great lads – experienced lads – and there’s a lot of Brits too, which is rare these days.

“And the performances in the league have been brilliant. The Sheffield United game, I was watching from the stand thinking, ‘We’re blowing teams away’.”

Tuesday’s game was rather more fraught, with Boro falling behind on three occasions before clawing their way back to force penalties.

England’s World Cup success over Colombia demolished the theory that a shoot-out is a ‘lottery’, and Lonergan put his experience to good use as Boro claimed a 4-3 win.

The veteran has previously faced both Stead and Jones, and while he admits some of Notts County’s other penalty takers were an unknown quantity, he was always confident about thwarting the players he knew best.

“I know Jon Stead really well, and Danny Jones too, and I knew which way to go,” he said. “I knew how to read them. The others I had no idea. But I got to two of them, so that’s great. I wanted to make a good impression, and hopefully in the end I did.”