DURING his three-year spell as the assistant manager at Real Madrid, Aitor Karanka won a La Liga title, a Copa del Rey and helped his side qualify for the semi-finals of the Champions League for three seasons in a row.

As he prepares to head into the final two games of the current campaign with Middlesbrough, however, the Spaniard insists that winning promotion with the Teessiders would be a more notable achievement than anything he experienced at the Bernabeu.

“It’s a completely different situation,” said Karanka, who was also part of three Champions League-winning Real Madrid squads as a player. “At Real Madrid, you were dealing with players who were used to playing with international games with their national team and playing in the Champions League.

“Now, in our squad, I think we have two or three players who have played in the Premier League. This is all very new for them, and it is a difficult situation.

“I’m not saying it is easy to win Champions League semi-finals with Real Madrid, but it is easier when you are used to playing in those kinds of games every season.

“It is more difficult to get promotion here when you are not used to playing in the Premier League, but we are doing very well and we just have to think about the Fulham game because it is going to be very tough.”

Boro head to Fulham this afternoon knowing a win is all but essential if they are to carry their hopes of achieving automatic promotion into the final game of the season against Brighton.

With Watford taking on Brighton in today’s lunch-time fixture, the Teessiders could be four points adrift of top spot by the time they kick off at Craven Cottage.

However, with Bournemouth not facing Bolton until Monday night, Karanka’s side are guaranteed to finish the day in an automatic promotion spot if they claim all three points against a Fulham team with nothing to play for after securing their Championship survival.

It is now six years since Boro dropped out of the Premier League, and in that time, Steve Gibson has invested around £1m a month in an attempt to reclaim the club’s top-flight status.

The club’s latest accounts revealed an annual loss of more than £20m, and while Gibson has successfully remained within the limits imposed by the Football League’s Financial Fair Play regulations, the impact of achieving promotion would be immense.

Next season is the final year of the Premier League’s current TV deal, and while top-flight clubs’ annual incomes will rise even higher from 2016 onwards, winning promotion this month would be worth considerably more than £100m once future parachute payments are taken into account.

Clearly, that would transform Middlesbrough’s financial outlook, although Karanka insists that monetary matters are for others to worry about while he concerns himself with coaching his players.

“I know about the figures,” he said. “But I can’t think about that because it is not my job. My job is to try to train the players every single day and put the best XI on the pitch to win as many games as possible.  

“As a squad, we want to achieve promotion because of what it would mean from a football point of view, not because of the moment. The money arrives as a present. If you deserve the money, it arrives.

“But you can’t think about the money when you don’t deserve it. If we are in the Championship, it will be because we are not good enough to be in the Premier League next year.”

Be that as it may, Karanka and his recruitment team have already begun to consider their options for the summer, with separate targets understood to be in place depending on the outcome of this month’s promotion fight.

Clearly, a place in the Premier League would greatly increase Boro’s spending power, but regardless of what happens in the next few weeks, Karanka is adamant he will not be rushing out to sign a group of ageing stars looking to earn one last payday at the Riverside.

“I don’t think we need to change a lot,” he said. “It’s true that with more money, you can make better signings. But I think we need to keep going in the same way, whether we get promotion or are still in the Championship next season.

“We need to try to bring in players who want to be here, not players who would only be coming here to earn more money. That is the thing we have been doing since we arrived here.

“We have players who had better offers to go to other teams, but they preferred to come here. That is what I want, whether it is the Championship or the Premier League. I only want players who are 100 per cent committed to the club.”