AITOR Karanka has questioned the attitude of his players after Middlesbrough suffered their first defeat in nine games against Ipswich Town on Saturday.

Goals from Daryl Murphy and Jay Tabb helped Mick McCarthy’s side leapfrog Boro into second spot in the Championship and inflict a first defeat since October 21 on the beleaguered Teessiders.

Karanka’s men were far from their best at Portman Road and turned in the exact opposite display to the one that saw them overcome Derby County the week before.

Ipswich and Boro had near-identical records going into the game, but an uncharacteristically bad afternoon for the league’s tightest defence gifted the Tractor Boys and easy passage into second place.

It wasn’t just as the back where they fell short with Ipswich out-muscling and out-classing them all over the field.

In reality, it is only Boro’s second defeat since the end of August, but Karanka was scathing in his assessment of his team’s performance and was particularly unhappy with the attitude of his players.

“Everything went wrong,” the Spaniard said. “It’s easy to understand when you have showed the players images of Murphy and you have told them in a meeting for ten or 15 minutes that he is the biggest scorer and then the first ball he has he scored from.

“Then, when (Teddy) Bishop, who is 18-years-old, is the best on the pitch. He was joking with us because he was playing in the way he wanted to play.

“The second goal was scored by a player who is 5ft 5ins. They wanted to win the game and again we have thought we are better than we are.

“That’s the most important message, the attitude has to be right. The attitude was not good and that is something we have to change for the next game on Friday.”

The result leaves Middlesbrough fourth in the table three points behind leaders Bournemouth, who were 6-1 winners at Blackpool.

Their last defeat sparked the eight match unbeaten run that ended on Saturday and Karanka hopes it will act as a wake-up call for his squad going into Friday’s Boxing Day match against Nottingham Forest at the Riverside Stadium.

He said: “Last week, we were at the Riverside and I think the players were thinking we are a Premier League or Champions League team, but now I think it is a good alarm for us to wake up and know where we are and who we are.

“I have two feelings. The first is embarrassment, because our performance was very, very poor and the other feeling is that I am not pleased because when you have lost a game you can’t be happy. I think we needed a result like this.

“We have seen that when this team has had a bad performance the following one is good so I like to think we will be good against Nottingham Forest.

“It’s impossible to take anything good from the performance.”