AITOR KARANKA has defended Middlesbrough’s spending spree in the Championship this summer as he considers a further dip into the transfer market.

The Boro boss – who also suggested Italian midfielder Diego Fabbrini is at the right place to prove his true worth after arriving from Watford on a season-long loan – accepts his recruitment drive has made other managers sit up and take notice.

Burnley’s Sean Dyche has previously stated his shock at some of the figures being paid out in the Football League and Boro have followed up the arrival of £7m man Stewart Downing with £3.6m striker Cristhian Stuani and £4m Leicester striker David Nugent. Blackburn’s £14m-rated forward Jordan Rhodes had been pursued for much of the summer.

Middlesbrough decided against paying over the odds for Rhodes. But Karanka is weighing up a move for Nottingham Forest’s £5m-rated winger Michail Antonio, with Mustapha Carayol a possible makeweight.

And Karanka said: “We are spending money this season because we felt the moment was now to spend money. Others spent money when they were in the Premier League last season. The money in this division tends to be with the teams who were in the Premier League.

“For this reason I can’t understand his (Dyche) comments. We are signing players this season, but they (Burnley) signed players last season. I think they are also signing them this season.

“I said after the game against Getafe at the beginning of August that I don’t have any problems when the window is finished because I will always say I have the best players. I will never use my players as the excuse regardless of who I do or don’t get.”

Boro have had a number of clubs - Preston, Blackburn and Forest are among them - contact them over the possible loan of Carayol, who has outlined a desire to leave.

Karanka, whose side play Derby County tonight, said: “I am thinking about the game and I don’t have time to speak with CEO (Neil Bausor). I think we are progressing well.”

The quality of Fabbrini on a season-long loan has really got fans talking after his first two starts for the club. He was excellent in wins over Oldham and Bolton, playing to a standard which highlighted why he earned his first cap for Italy in a friendly with England in 2012.

But if the 25-year-old is that good, why has he spent the last two years in the Championship? Karanka said: “It’s a lot of things. It’s the environment, how confident is the player where he is? How well the staff knows the players, how comfortable is the player living where he is living? It depends on a lot of things.

“When I was speaking with him, the first thing he told me was that he knew he could improve here. That is the main thing. Here he can play with better players, in a better environment with better everything.

“He was maybe the most important player in the team at Birmingham and then Millwall, or the best. It is difficult for someone to have all the pressure on him. Maybe here, he doesn’t have it all on him all the time because we have more players who are important to us.

“He can play in the Premier League, that’s certain. He played one game with the Italian national team, it is not a coincidence he has that quality.”

And yet Karanka, who has no fresh injury problems, has not decided whether Fabbrini will start his third game in a row at Derby. Last season he would regularly tinker with the team and is happy to repeat that tactic this time around.

He said: “I could keep changing teams. For example, when I am analysing all the teams they have 26 or 27 players. I prefer 22 or 21 with more or less the same quality. At Derby I could feel Stuani is ready. He played against Oldham, he scored two, then Kike played on Saturday and scored two. That’s good for me.

“I have to think who is best for each game. I was criticised last season because I made a lot of changes but that is the way to not get injuries. I can’t understand why a player thinks he can play seven or eight games in arrow inside 28 days. Maybe I am wrong.”

Middlesbrough (4-2-3-1): Konstantopoulos; Nsue, Ayala, Kalas, Friend; Leadbitter, Clayton; Adomah, Fabbrini, Downing; Kike.