AITOR KARANKA expects Middlesbrough’s team spirit to play a crucial role in their survival push – and is hoping the club’s ongoing Spanish training camp will set the mood for the run-in for the second season in a row.

Boro’s squad have spent the last three days training at a state-of-the-art facility on the edge of Benidorm, and are not due to return to England until tomorrow evening, less than 24 hours before they take on Everton in a crucial home game.

Karanka is hoping the change of training environment helps his players recharge their batteries, and also expects the intensive break to bring his squad closer together after a difficult spell that has seen the Teessiders slip to within a point of the bottom three.

This time last year, Karanka took his players to Marbella, and they responded with a run of three successive victories that played a crucial role in the outcome of the promotion race. In the previous campaign, Boro visited Marbella before seeing off Brentford in the play-off semi-final, and while the venue might be slightly different this time around, the Spaniard is hoping a visit to his homeland will have the same positive effect.

“The main thing is to be together,” said the Boro head coach, who is set to restore Gaston Ramirez to his starting line-up tomorrow. “At this point of the season, we’ve done this before, and I think now when you have four months to finish, it’s always good to spend days together.

“When you’re at home, you train and go home. Here, we train, we spend 24 hours together and, with the new players we have as well, the main thing is to make this group stronger.

“When you arrive to a new place and you are at the training ground, you go home and don’t spend a lot of time with your team-mates. I think it’s important for them to feel how strong this group is, and why we’ve been good.”

Boro signed Rudy Gestede, Patrick Bamford and Adlene Guedioura during last month’s transfer window, and the last few days have provided the trio with an opportunity to fully integrate themselves into the squad.

Bamford is already a familiar face on Teesside thanks to his previous loan spell from Chelsea, but Gestede and Guedioura are less well known. Gestede is likely to provide back-up to Alvaro Negredo, but Guedioura will hope to force his way into Karanka’s first-choice line-up, and offer the kind of attacking threat from midfield that has not always been apparent this season.

“We tried hard to get some players in, and we’ve done that, getting three really good ones,” said Adam Forshaw. “Obviously the fans will be made up to have Pat back, and Rudy and Adlene have settled in really well too.

“Adlene likes to get himself into the box. Being critical of myself and others, we maybe should score a few more goals, and hopefully he can help the team do that. He’s just something different.”

Unlike some teams that win promotion, Boro have retained a strong core of the players who finished in the top two last season, and the likes of Ben Gibson, George Friend, Adam Clayton and Stewart Downing continue to play an influential role in the dressing room.

Karanka has also added to the group, but while the likes of Negredo and Victor Valdes might boast impressive CVs, their manager has still insisted they buy in to the team ethic.

“The biggest difference (in Spain) is that after training, we have lunch together, we share time together in the meeting room, and the players are together. It’s good for the group.

“When you are together 24 hours, you speak about everything – how we started, how we are now, and for the future. The only way is to keep together and fight together.

“Over the last three years, we don’t have players who cost £100m or £80m, and our big thing is how strong this group is.”

Having lost at Tottenham last weekend, Boro go into tomorrow’s game just one point above Hull City, who currently occupy the final relegation place.

They have won just one of their last ten league games, and will be taking on an Everton side that put six goals past Bournemouth on their last outing, but Karanka remains optimistic about his team’s chances.

Boro have spent the whole of the season outside the bottom three, and Karanka sees no reason why that should change in the next three-and-a-half months.

When asked what it would feel like to keep Boro up, he said: “It would be amazing. To arrive three years ago in that situation (when Boro were close to the bottom of the Championship) and finish in the Premier League competing, especially when everyone can watch us competing, we have to be proud. For me as a coach, it’s the main thing when your players are doing their best.”