IT is 387 days since Aitor Karanka left his position as Middlesbrough manager, yet his shadow continues to loom large. To some supporters, he is the training-ground guru who should never have been dismissed. To others, he is the failed man-manager whose weaknesses explain why Boro are no longer in the top-flight. Either way, it’s hard not to have an opinion about a figure who burned so brightly and exploded so spectacularly during his three-and-a-half years at the Riverside.

Today, he returns for the first time since his departure in March 2017. With six more games to play, this afternoon’s game with Nottingham Forest could hardly be more important for a Boro side that find themselves embroiled in a six-team tussle for a play-off spot. After Monday’s slip-up at Burton Albion, the margin for error is practically non-existent.

Yet for months now, today’s game has been marked down as something more important than merely another chance to stay in contention at the top of the table. It is about acknowledging Karanka’s achievements – the run to Wembley, promotion, the last-gasp draw at Manchester City in the Premier League – before proving to the Spaniard that Middlesbrough have moved on. Respect? Certainly. Gratitude? Unquestionably, despite the way things unravelled in the end. But also a need to bury some demons and start focusing on the future rather than the past.

“I’ve managed against Aitor twice, and I think he’s a good manager,” said Tony Pulis, who finds himself inhabiting Karanka’s former seat at the Riverside. “He did a fantastic job at this football club, and I’m sure he’ll get a good welcome back. I’m sure he’ll get a good response from the supporters, and he deserves it.

“It’s a big achievement to get a team into the Premier League. I did it at Stoke a long time back, and it’s great. It’s a fantastic achievement no matter who you are or what team you’re managing. It gives you an opportunity then to manage at the top level, and that’s where you want to be.”

The first half of Karanka’s Riverside reign was a largely unbroken upward curve. He steadied the ship after replacing Tony Mowbray, tightening up the Middlesbrough defence in the same way that he has stopped Nottingham Forest shipping goals in his first three months at the City Ground.

The Wembley defeat to Norwich City was a blip, but Karanka regrouped and successfully led Boro to promotion the following season. Already, though, the seeds of his downfall had been sown. There was the walk-out ahead of a defeat to Charlton Athletic that caused irreparable damage to his relationship with some of the senior players in his squad, not to mention a series of dressing-room squabbles that eventually developed into a more serious breakdown of trust.

Karanka struggled to deal with the mounting pressure during Boro’s Premier League campaign, and in the weeks and months after his departure, it wasn’t hard to find one of his former players with a critical comment to level in his direction.

A year on, and you suspect some of the more vitriolic assessments of his reign will have been becalmed. Nevertheless, it remains true to say that a number of players who will be starting in the home ranks this afternoon were far from sorry to see their former manager leave.

“Things happen in life, and things happen in football, whether it’s individual relationships or group relationships,” said Pulis. “That happens, and people should move on. I’ve not come into this football club and heard anybody speak badly of Aitor – not that I’ve ever asked mind, because I want to do things for the future, not for the past.”

It is not Karanka’s style to make emotive comments, and for the most part, the 44-year-old has kept his counsel in the build up to today’s game.

Even he would now appear to concede that the time had come for a parting of the ways, but he clearly retains a fondness for Middlesbrough and a respect for the players he left behind.

“I know this is a different game because of my past with Middlesbrough, which was good and amazing,” said Karanka. “It will be an advantage that I know them so well, but while I know their weaknesses, I also know their strengths. They have very good players.

“They have players who were playing with me, but who now have Premier League experience. They are better players now than they were two or three years ago, and they also have the new signings that they have brought in this season, players like (Mo) Besic, (Britt) Assombalonga and (Jonny) Howson. They have an amazing team. I know them, but I also know how difficult this game is going to be.”

Karanka reserved special praise for Patrick Bamford, a player he recruited both on loan and as a permanent acquisition.

“I am really pleased for him because he was the Player of the Season when he was with us the first time, when he was really young,” he said. “He could not play at his best last season, but to see him playing his best now and scoring goals – I’m really pleased for him.

“I am pleased for him because he is a good kid. I always wanted him because he is a very good player.”

As a boyhood Nottingham Forest fan and a former product of the club’s academy prior to joining Chelsea in January 2012, Bamford might well head into today’s game feeling he has a point to prove. Not as big a one, though, as the figure commanding all the attention in the visitors’ dug-out.