AITOR KARANKA is confident Christian Stuani and Diego Fabbrini will be confirmed as Middlesbrough players at the start of next week, with club officials due to complete the technicalities of their moves in the next 48 hours.

Stuani, a Uruguay international who is leaving Spanish side Espanyol for around £3m, and Fabbrini, an Italian midfielder who is moving on a season-long loan from Watford, were at the Keepmoat Stadium this afternoon as Boro continued their pre-season preparations with a goalless draw against Doncaster.

The pair took part in the pre-match warm-ups before watching the game from the sidelines, and Karanka is looking forward to being able to call on them as fully-fledged members of the squad.

“I hope they’re close to signing,” said the Boro head coach. “We’ve been working on both of them, but we just need to finish the paperwork.

“Hopefully, they can be with us as soon as possible, and both of them are going to be very important players for us. They are players who wanted to join us, even though they had better offers and better contracts to go elsewhere.

“They wanted to join us, and when we can finally sign them, they are going to improve the squad. I will be very pleased when they can play.”

The duo watched an uneventful goalless draw from the sidelines in South Yorkshire, with Boro’s lack of an attacking cutting edge once again apparent.

There have been no further developments in the Jordan Rhodes saga since the striker publicly criticised Blackburn Rovers for denying him the opportunity to speak to Middlesbrough yesterday, so Boro were forced to field Bradley Fewster and Kike as their forwards.

Fewster was unfortunate not to win a penalty when it appeared as though he was brought down by Doncaster goalkeeper Thorsten Stuckmann before the break, but Kike’s lack of confidence was apparent in the second-half effort that sailed miles over the crossbar despite him having the goal at his mercy.

“It’s the same thing again,” said Karanka. “We need to score goals. This was our fifth (pre-season) game and we have only scored three goals. It’s the same problem – we created chances but did not score.

“The main thing today though is that we didn’t have any injuries, and we were able to try other options like George (Friend) and Tomas (Kalas) as central defenders. The young players also had another opportunity, so this was a good game to try different things.”