GARRY MONK insists Middlesbrough will not be held to ransom over Jota – and remains confident the club will retain Ben Gibson beyond next Thursday’s transfer deadline despite ongoing Premier League interest in the defender.

With seven days of the transfer window remaining, Monk remains keen to add a defender and an attacker to his ranks. A deal is in place for Ryan Shotton, and while Birmingham are still refusing to release the centre-half until they have secured a replacement, there remains a high degree of confidence that a transfer will be concluded.

Things are less certain when it comes to Jota, with Brentford having turned down Boro’s £4.5m bid as well as an alternative offer from Hull City, and indicated they continue to value the attacking midfielder at around the £8m mark.

Boro’s recruitment team are reluctant to go that high given that Jota recently entered the final year of his contract at Griffin Park, and while the Spaniard currently remains the club’s number one target, they are adamant they will not be backed into a corner with a number of alternative targets also under discussion.

“We have a number of options, that’s the process you go through,” said Monk, who has spent more than £40m on new signings since taking over at the Riverside at the start of the summer. “You sit down with all the guys involved in that process, and while you have an understanding of what your first target is, you also know your second, third and fourth.

“You try to work through that list. Of course you want to get your first priority, but that can’t always happen. Sometimes, that happens through circumstances.

“The key is making sure that whoever comes through the building is going to help the squad, and is of the quality that we expect and need. I think we’ve done that process very well this summer, and that will continue up to the end of this window.”

Boro are braced for interest in a number of their players, but with more than a dozen senior names having left since the end of last season, whether through sales, their release or the end of their loan deal, Monk remains adamant he does not want to sanction any more departures.

The Teessiders have rejected a £6m offer from Leeds United for Rudy Gestede, and will respond in exactly the same way if the Elland Road club return with an improved bid in the next few days. Monk does not want to lose Adama Traore despite talk of mounting interest from French club Lyon, and continues to insist Gibson will be going nowhere no matter what happens between now and Thursday night.

The centre-half was left out of Gareth Southgate’s England squad for next month’s matches with Malta and Slovakia yesterday, and it would be understandable if he was keen to return to the Premier League rather than spend the next nine months in the Championship.

However, with Boro having rejected two bids from West Brom this summer, Monk expects his employers to maintain their hardline stance no matter what happens before the window closes.

“The owner made it very clear, and I’m of the same thinking,” he said. “We don’t have to sell anyone in our squad. With good players and important players, there’s always going to be speculation, but like the owner said, we don’t have to sell.

“We’re not in a position where, financially, we have to sell any players, or face a set of circumstances where we have to do something we don’t want to do. The club have been very strong on that.

“That’s good, and I’m very supportive of that. You can see from the players’ attitude and commitment to what we’re doing on the pitch that they’re fully behind it. You can’t ever stop speculation – good players attract interest - but as a club we’re in a strong position and the success of this club is the most important thing.”

In January, Boro prevented Gaston Ramirez from joining Leicester City and the midfielder effectively downed tools for the second half of the campaign. Gibson is a completely different character to the Uruguayan though, and Monk feels it is important clubs continue to hold the upper hand in transfer discussions rather than the players they employ.

“I think people make a mistake and look at it wrongly sometimes,” he said. “There’s talk of players doing this or that and having it all their own way, and agents doing whatever they want, but at the end of the day, the club is always the most important factor.

“They have the right and power to do what they think is best. When you sign for a club, you should be doing what’s best for the club as well as your own interests. That is going missing nowadays.

“It is going out of football, but we haven’t got difficult issues to deal with here. We didn’t have difficult issues with the players we moved out, and we don’t have any now with the players we want to keep.”

Boro return to action when they host Preston in the Championship tomorrow, with Martin Braithwaite the only injury absentee. The summer signing from Toulouse is back in training, and should be available to return after the international break.