Aitor Karanka (Managerial Attributes)

Thought I would put this out there for discussion. Moving forward from the heartbreak 

AK's first full season. Was it a success?

What attributes has AK displayed that make you think he will become a successful manager.

Controversially perhaps, I consider AK's main and most important attribute to be his ability to provide quality players on loan to the club. Other than that he has demonstrated to me that he is still a football manager with a lot to learn.

Considering where we were and the state we were in when he took over, I don't think it could be smdewcribed as anything other than successful.

He'll only get better

His main and most important attributes are probably his honesty, his work ethos and his ability to install a team mentality.

Been a very long time since anyone has been honest with the fans and the players and has got the players to work hard and for each other rather than just having a bunch of individuals behind the scenes.

Of course its a success. Even if you finish one place above the previous. Season its a success

Hes seen all the players in the league now and probably watched a few div 1 games start of this season he had to rely on scouting reports now he knows who he fancies himself. Lets see what happens in the summer

Terrible manager, if I was the chairman of any manager-less team, I wouldn't even look at him. :D

give Aitor better players and we will get better results, not always the case with a poor manager.

we played most of the season with reach and adomah as wingers even when they were out of sorts. sort these positions out and the lack of goals that cost us would be gone. brilliant first full season imo.

Get adohma playing like he did last 10 games but with better final ball and weve really got a player

I would say that this season was on target. Our aim was the play offs and we achieved this. Promotion would have been a success and outside the top six I think would have been failure.

For all the positive about AK and there are many I think there are questions about his ability to turn a match around, his reluctance to have a plan b and his success in the transfer market.

He strikes me as an intelligent guy and I'm sure he knows he has development areas afterall he's only been in the job 18 months

Over rated. Rather have strachen....

Performed way above expectations this season and he should be the one name on a 4 year contract that Gibbo gets before all others this summer.

He will learn from this year and be even better next year

not just saying this because we lost yesterday but  around two thirds into the season although in my heart as we hovered around the top places i craved promotion  deep down i  felt  that  we  would  be  even better  if we had to play in this league next time round and  i think AK will be a lot more clinical  in the next  promotion push having sampled a pretty much full term at the business end  he will  know which style and mentality of players he wants on the pitch from the off .  Even though we came as close as is possible we did  experiment along the way  and  also had to deal with  quite a few of those backfiring  early on .

what impressed me most was the fact that we recovered almost immediately from bad results  and didnt have a prolonged bad run .  i hope he has  the  bravery to ditch the cautious set ups  and  finds a systen to integrate our main men in a attacking formation . 

some of the decisions  suprised me  a little ( steele, hignett  especially)but in the main  i feel a damn sight more optomistic than i did 2 years ago .  

Performed way above expectations this season and he should be the one name on a 4 year contract that Gibbo gets before all others this summer.

 

He will learn from this year and be even better next year

This.

Anyone who reads my posts won't be surprised to hear I'm a big fan of AK. I like his honesty, and his dedication and the fact that he never fails to give Gibson his dues.

That said, I think he needs to develop, to echo what many have said, a plan B. It's not a coincidence that when we score first, we tend to win, but when we concede, it usually spells defeat. He shouldn't be afraid to thow a curve ball (bringing Ledesma on, sticking Ayala up front and going Route 1), and he should probably recognise that sometimes confidence should be valued over ability - after his performance against Brentford, Kike will have been more up for the game yesterday then Bamford arguably was.

But I think he's doing a great job, and hopefully he'll keep the spine of his team intact, and should be looking to win without fear from day 1 in August.

Definitely a success. I thought we'd just miss out on the play-offs at the start of the season and we were a couple of wins away from being promoted automatically, and one win the other way.

I'm hoping for a good summer, with some players brought in early, like Kalas for instance, and for us to be ready at the start of the season, rather than at the start of the season just gone when we didn't really get started for a month or so.

I think you have to say that we've had a good season. I'm not sure I'd call it a success though as we didn't actually achieve anything but certainly a good season without question.

Karanka is clearly able to organise very well and to get his ideas across to the players based on what I've seen so far this season. He comes across well enough when he speaks and seems to have a good bond with the players as far as I can tell, similar to Mourinho I suppose. We've clearly become a better side under him and his work with us from a defensive point of view has been very good.

An issue I have with him is that we are formulaic and I think this is one of the reasons we struggle when we go behind because we don't seem to try anything different. Even yesterday it was like watching a training game at times the way we were approaching things. We seem to be almost unable to chase a game when behind, which I find bizarre as even poor sides can usually manage it a bit and we aren't a poor side. We lost 12 games this season if you include the play off final and in 9 of those we failed to even score. Only 3 times were we able to go behind and get something out of the game and only one of those was a win. I would also add that our approach in some of the big games has been wrong in my opinion and we gave ourselves no chance of winning those games and that includes yesterday.

He's 18 months into being a manager and there's been far more good than bad. He's still learning and he's had to learn about English football as well at the same time. I'll be really interested to see what we do in the summer with the squad.

Reading some of the replies on here, I'm actually a little bit relieved that we didn't go up. I'd call this year a major success and a minor failure. A success because we really went for it and ended up in a much improved league position with a Wembley final. That demonstrates huge steps taken by the club to get back to where we all believe we should be.

I'd call it a minor failure because we did fail to win the promotion that we all want. I think it's very good to acknowledge a failure because that way you're open to learning the reasons that you didn't succeed and can act to correct yourself in future.

I think that had we gone up, AK would be seen as some kind of messiah, which might have led to him being snapped up by a bigger club like Tottenham or Liverpool, only to find himself out of a job within a year when he didn't turn them into Real Madrid overnight. Karanka is building something at Boro. He's building a team which can be promoted to, and survive in, the Premier League. I think that's more important than when Robson had us up at the first attempt, then built a disjointed team which was held up by some great individuals by required a Terry Venables to keep us in the Prem, or when McClaren built a team of vastly paid, ageing geniuses for a short term stab at glory. I think Karanka is more savvy than that, and I hope he's here for the long-haul.

So I'm slightly relieved (although I'd have been ecstatic if we had beaten Norwich) because I think this gives Karanka another year to build a more sustainable team, with some demonstrable potential for automatic promotion next year.