AITOR KARANKA was delighted to see his Middlesbrough defenders produce an error-free display in last night’s 1-0 win over Bolton Wanderers – now he is demanding similar standards from his strikers.

Albert Adomah’s first-half finish secured a hard-fought victory over Bolton Wanderers that kept Boro in second place in the Championship table, two points adrift of league leaders Derby County.

Whereas Saturday’s 1-0 defeat to Leeds United saw Boro fail to take anything despite being close to their best, last night’s victory was achieved despite a largely lacklustre performance that featured a succession of misses from leading goalscorer Patrick Bamford.

Bamford spurned four decent openings as Boro failed to make their superiority count, and with his side having scored just two goals in their last three league matches, Karanka is demanding a more ruthless streak in front of goal in the final 13 games of the season.

“We have fixed one part of our mistakes, and that is the defensive errors,” said the Boro head coach. “But now we have to fix the attacking mistakes as well because it is not possible to finish the games with a win when we have problems like this.

“We have had four or five clear chances to score and not taken them. The defensive mistakes have been fixed, and that is important. But now we also need to improve our attacking.

“They have to improve because I can understand if you miss one or two chances one day, but every single day we are missing a lot of chances.

“In the same way that I said that individual defensive mistakes were down to concentration, it is also the same with scoring goals. In the same way I demand that my defenders are concentrated, I also have to demand the same from my strikers so they can score goals.”

With Derby, Ipswich, Norwich, Watford and Brentford all winning last night – fourth-place Bournemouth are in action this evening at Nottingham Forest – it was imperative that Boro took maximum points after failing to beat Birmingham and Leeds in their two previous fixtures.

The win was never really in doubt from the moment Adomah converted Lee Tomlin’s slide-rule through ball, but the overall standard of the Teessiders’ display was poor.

Passes went astray, particularly in the first half, and as well as chances being spurned, the tempo of the home side’s performance was a notch or two below what they have displayed in the majority of their matches this season.

“Four days ago, I was saying we had played one of our best games and lost (against Leeds),” said Karanka. “Today, we have played one of our worst games since I have been here, but we have won.

“The important thing is that we have won three more points. We will have to analyse the game because I cannot really explain anything now.

“The good thing is the three points, but it’s difficult for me to understand what happened because I didn’t really recognise some of my players.”

In particular, Karanka was alarmed by a lack of attacking ambition, with Boro rarely committing too many players into the Bolton box.

“I saw a lot of different things to what I normally see from my players,” said the Spaniard, who will take his side to Sheffield Wednesday for their next game on Saturday. “Most of the time, they have shown consistency and confidence, but today, especially in the first half, we showed a lack of ambition.

“I don’t know how many chances we had to score – four or five – but we didn’t take them. A lot of strange things happened for me.”