AITOR KARANKA has played down talk of a renewed attempt to land Blackburn Rovers striker Jordan Rhodes by claiming he has “amazing” players already at Middlesbrough.

Boro have tried to tempt Blackburn in to offloading the 14-goal hit-man on loan for the rest of the season with a view to a £10m permanent summer switch if they seal promotion.

But Rovers have knocked back such an attempt and are adamant that he will not be leaving under such circumstances.

Karanka, whose side face an important game with promotion rivals Ipswich on Saturday, gave the impression that nothing was going to happen when he was speaking at his pre-match press conference at Rockliffe Park this afternoon.

The Spanish head coach said: “I don't need to speak about speculation because we have a lot of games in front of us that are very important. Jordan Rhodes is not our player so I prefer to speak about our players.

“If, if, if – I prefer to speak about the present and at the present I have an amazing squad and all of them are amazing players and all of them are amazing lads.”

He added: “We could bring Ronaldo and Messi that could be good for everybody. But I have my squad, I am very happy with all of them and we are working to win the game on Saturday.”

Middlesbrough are without right-back Ryan Fredericks for the visit of the Tractor Boys because of hamstring trouble, but will assess the fitness of centre-back Daniel Ayala on Friday after recovering from an ankle injury.

Karanka is keen to focus on one game at a time rather than the three upcoming fixtures collectively against promotion rivals Ipswich, Derby and Bournemouth.

Middlesbrough are level on points with Bournemouth, Derby and Watford at the top of the Championship and the boss thinks there will be no runaway winner of the Championship this season.

He said: “I have been here for just 16 months but people around me here at the club say never have they seen something like this season. This season there are eight teams very close and we have to fight for every single point as it was the last one every single week. It will go on like this for the rest of the season, it will be very tight.”