Craig Hignett: Boro have two united teams - one on the pitch and one off it

Boro assistant head coach Craig Hignett: 'When we win, we win together and when we lose, we take it badly together'

Craig Hignett insists Boro have two united teams - one on the pitch and one off it.

The ex-Hartlepool assistant boss says he has quickly forged a productive partnership with the club’s continental coaches.

Steve Gibson searched exhaustively for a British assistant to work alongside head coach Aitor Karanka before appointing Hignett on March 3.

Ironically the former Boro midfielder had cut his coaching teeth at Boro as an Academy coach at Rockliffe before leaving for Pools with Colin Cooper.

It seems to have been a wise choice because the Englishman has hit it off straight away with Boro’s Spanish boss, Uruguayan goalkeeping coach Leo Percovich, Portuguese fitness specialist Carlos Cachada and Spanish analyst Javier Egido.

“I found that from the very first time I met him I enjoyed Aitor’s company and got on really well with him,” said Hignett.

“But it’s not just Aitor, it’s Carlos, it’s Leo, it’s Javier, they are all very easy to get along with and they have made me feel really welcome.

“We socialise together as well so from my point of view, they’ve made it really easy for me to settle in.

“When we win, we win together and when we lose, we take it badly together.”

Hignett says he’s learning a lot from working with Karanka but insists he has an important input of his own.

“The methods and how they go about things – to me it’s great because I can see different things and learn from it,” he added.

“At the same time, I’ve got a some knowledge about the league and about certain players they might not have so, from the off, we’ve been a real team, a proper team. Not just me and Aitor, all of us, we are a real team.”

Hignett arrived at Boro with most of the season gone so he can be forgiven for looking forward to this summer, when he will be intimately involved in the preparation for the 2014/15 campaign.

However, he thinks it would be wrong to look too far ahead.

“We’ve got some big games between now and the end of the season so I’ll leave those thoughts until the summer,” he said. “We want to finish this year strongly as possible.

“I know it’s a cliché but we will be taking it game by game. At the end of that we will see where we are.”