AS Norwich City’s players began to wrap up their celebrations on the Wembley pitch an hour or so after the final whistle of yesterday’s play-off final with Middlesbrough, Aitor Karanka was in the bowels of Wembley Stadium discussing his plans for another season in the Championship. Such is the way of things when you lose in the biggest club game of them all.

Since taking over at the Riverside 18 months ago, Karanka has suffered very little in the way of setbacks. There have been defeats along the way, and this month started with the disappointment of missing out on automatic promotion, but the trajectory has been almost unwaveringly upward and progress has been discernible at every turn.

Suddenly, however, the graph has plunged in a downwards direction and as he heads back to his homeland to recharge his batteries and begin to sift through the wreckage of what went wrong, Karanka must identify the small margins that ultimately prevented Middlesbrough from reclaiming a place in the Premier League.

That will almost mean new signings, with Patrick Bamford and Kenneth Omeruo set to join Tomas Kalas back at Chelsea, Ryan Fredericks heading back to Tottenham and major question marks hanging over the futures of the likes of Dean Whitehead, Jonathan Woodgate and Jelle Vossen. However, it could also mean adapting the mentality of a squad that ultimately fell short in the final reckoning.

Either way, it will be much easier to enact change if Karanka remains the man in charge, and while there has been mounting talk of potential interest from Newcastle United and Sunderland, Premier League clubs who are almost certain to be searching for a new manager this summer, Boro’s admired head coach insists he will be going nowhere as he prepares to enter the final year of his current Riverside deal.

“I want to say how proud I am of my players, my chairman, my club and my crowd,” said Karanka, as he reflected on a season that brought Boro’s highest finish since they dropped out of the Premier League, but that will also see them embarking on a seventh successive season in the Championship come August.

“I arrived here 18 months ago and the team was two points above the relegation position. We had around 14,000 people at the Riverside. Today, we showed everybody that Middlesbrough is a Premier League club and my job is to get this club into the Premier League again.

“I am looking forward to next season. I have one more year on my contract and, when I came here, my objective was to put Middlesbrough back in the Premier League. I have always said I couldn’t choose a better place to start my career, and after this season, I am still thinking the same. This is the best club, with the best chairman, and the best squad.”

Nevertheless, having beaten Norwich twice during the regular season, Boro’s players were unable to raise themselves sufficiently to secure the hat-trick of triumphs that would have secured top-flight status.

From the moment Cameron Jerome dispossessed Daniel Ayala to break the deadlock, Boro were on the back foot, and when Nathan Redmond doubled Norwich’s lead in the 15th minute, Karanka’s players resembled rabbits startled in the headlights of a Canaries onslaught.

The intensity that had characterised so much of Boro’s play in the regular season deserted them as Norwich’s superior experience told, but Karanka felt his side’s individual errors were more of a factor in their defeat.

“It is not about intensity, it is about the mistakes,” he said. “When you make mistakes, it is difficult to win the games. In a final, if you make a mistake, you will pay for it. But we achieved to play at Wembley as a team. When we win, we win as a team, and when we lose, we lose as a team.”

Bamford was part of that team yesterday, and while he appeared to be feeling the effects of the ankle injury that has plagued him for most of the last month, Karanka defended his decision to play the Chelsea loanee for the full 90 minutes of the game.

“If I decided to put Patrick on the pitch, it is because he was 100 per cent fit,” he said. “I was speaking with him, and I decided that he could play 90 minutes, or even 120 minutes if it was needed. He played 90 minutes because he was ready to play, and I thought it was the best for the team.”

Similarly, Karanka played down the impact of the delay that led to his players arriving an hour or so before kick-off, even though it would be usual for a team to afford themselves more time in order to settle in to their surroundings.

“It is not the first time we have done this,” he said. “We arrived at the same time against Brentford and beat them 2-1. I didn’t want to be in the changing room one-and-a-half hours or one-and-a-quarter hours before kick-off.

“Sometimes, to be in the changing room for a long time can bring more pressure on the players. As a player, I preferred to arrive straight to the pitch. We met some traffic, but that wasn’t a problem because we knew we were in London so we knew what we would face.”