Philip Tallentire: What Aitor Karanka might have meant in saying he couldn't motivate his players

Eyebrows were raised after Boro head coach's post-match comments last night - Philip Tallentire looks at the context of the remarks

Aitor Karanka may have admitted not motivating his team properly at Reading - but he’s not letting the players totally off the hook for two abject performances.

Boro followed a dismal display in the 2-1 home defeat to struggling Millwall with an equally poor effort at the Madejski Stadium last night.

The visitors were beaten 2-0 and, after the game, Karanka took the lion’s share of the blame.

He said: “I didn’t choose my team well and I didn’t know to motivate them and for this I need to learn for the future and for the next game to try to motivate them to win.

“It was my fault. It’s difficult when you don’t play for points but I didn’t choose the right players and I couldn’t motivate them.

“The defeat at Reading was my fault, I couldn’t motivate the players.

"It’s just my first season and I’m learning every day about the league, about the players, about everything.”

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As he touched on in his quotes, Karanka recognised that it can be difficult for player to play at their optimum levels when there’s nothing to play for in terms of promotion or relegation.

But, the message to the players who failed to perform at Reading is crystal clear and that is they have to be able to perform at maximum levels in every match and, just as importantly, every training session.

“As a player I was competitive and I want competitive players,” is how he put it.

“I don’t want to lose in a training session, never mind a match and for this I want players with the same mentality.

“No matter what position in the division we are in, I want to win.”

Boro have two games to negotiate before the season ends and Karanka begins assembling a squad that can win promotion in 2014/15.

To that end, the Spaniard will be keeping a close eye on how his players perform against Barnsley at the Riverside on Saturday, and at Yeovil on May 3.

“If you’re competitive you want to win all the games and that’s the thing I demand from my players, to finish the season as well as they can”, he added.