AITOR KARANKA admits it is “impossible” to keep all of his strikers happy, but the Middlesbrough head coach is not about to abandon his preferred policy of regularly rotating his forward line.

Since Patrick Bamford and Jelle Vossen arrived to join Kike and Lee Tomlin in the final week of the transfer window, Karanka has not named the same attacking line-up for successive Championship matches.

Kike and Tomlin have started the majority of games, but both have been dropped at various stages and it would take a brave person to confidently predict who will fill the attacking positions when Boro take on Brighton at the Amex Stadium this afternoon.

Karanka admits he has had to deal with some disappointed faces when he has announced his team for various matches this season, but the Spaniard has urged his strikers not to get too downbeat if they find themselves consigned to the substitutes’ bench.

While regular changes mean players will inevitably miss out from time to time, the flip side is that their next appearance in the first team should not be too far away.

“It is impossible to keep even one player happy when they are not playing,” said Karanka. “I do not even try, but my message to all the players is that they have to think about the team.

“They know that they are all going to have chances. They have had chances in the past, and all of them have been playing. I don’t know who is the player that has played most games up front because Bamford, Tomlin, Kike and Vossen have all played more or less the same. That is important.

“When they look at the first XI and don’t see themselves in there, they still have to support the team because they know that during that game, they will probably get an opportunity themselves. And if it is not during that game, it will be in the following one. They have to support the team from the bench and the stands.”

The extent of Karanka’s tinkering has been a source of fevered discussion amongst Riverside regulars this season.

Results suggest the former Real Madrid assistant must be doing something right, with Boro having racked up a six-game unbeaten run in the Championship ahead of today’s trip to the south coast.

Some Championship managers argue that consistency is essential in a league as tight and competitive as England’s second tier, but Karanka maintains it is impossible to play the same line-up for every match when teams are regularly playing three games in a week.

Since taking charge of his first game in English football almost a year ago, the Boro boss has been surprised by the demands of the fixture schedule and physicality of each game. As a result, his belief in the need to give players regular rest periods has strengthened.

“You cannot play the same players in every game,” he said. “I have to choose the best XI for that game, but you can’t forget that you have a lot of games coming up in the next few weeks after.

“I have to think about the season as a whole and try to do what I can to make sure we do not get injuries. I don’t want to be having injuries in the second half of the season because the players have already played too much. When I choose 11 players, it is because, for me, they are the best players for a specific game.”

Milos Veljkovic is available for today’s game, having completed a three-month loan move from Tottenham on Thursday. It would be a surprise if the 19-year-old was catapulted straight into the starting line-up, but Karanka could include him in the squad in order to give him a taste of the matchday experience at Middlesbrough.

Velkjovic’s settling-in process has been aided by the presence of Tottenham team-mate Ryan Fredericks, who is currently on a season-long loan from White Hart Lane.

However, Karanka feels the presence of so many young players in the current Boro squad makes it relatively easy for teenage arrivals to settle quickly wherever they have moved from.

“It is always important to try to do everything you can to help new players settle, especially when they are young players,” he said. “The most important thing for Milos is that the atmosphere on the training ground is very good, and after that, we have a lot of young players to be around him.

“We have three from Chelsea and another one from Tottenham, and also a lot of young players who have come through our academy. It is good for someone like Milos to be able to arrive from another club and feel like he has a lot of young players around him in the team.”