AITOR KARANKA has backed Middlesbrough midfielder Albert Adomah to bounce back from a difficult five days that saw him miss a decisive penalty and receive a red card.

Having failed to find the target with the final spot-kick as Middlesbrough lost a thrilling Capital One Cup shoot-out at Liverpool on Tuesday, Adomah was in the spotlight for the wrong reasons again on Saturday as he was dismissed in the closing stages of Boro’s goalless draw with Charlton.

The winger will be suspended for tomorrow’s home game with Blackpool as a result, but Karanka expects him to shrug off his double disappointment in order to return to training in a positive mood ahead of the weekend game with Fulham.

Karanka said: “Albert is an experienced player, he has been at the World Cup with his national team and I hope he's going to play the African Cup of Nations tournament in January. He is the kind of player who is intelligent, and I'm sure he is thinking about the last two games.

“But in Spain we say, ‘The person who missed the penalty is the person who takes the penalty’. He had the confidence to take the penalty, and that is important. When it comes to the sending off, I still can't believe today what happened on Saturday.”

Saturday’s draw saw Boro drop to seventh position in the table, but a win tomorrow would lift them back into the play-off places.

While the Teessiders have suffered just one away defeat all season, they have lost two of their four home games so far, and while their most recent outing at the Riverside resulted in a resounding 4-0 win over Brentford, Karanka is looking for an improvement in his players’ overall home form.

He said: “We have to win the games at home if we want to do something this season. We have lost a lot of points at home and I always say the same thing, ‘If we want to do something this season, we have to be strong at home’.”

This time last week, Boro were preparing for their trip to Anfield, and Karanka accepts that his players’ performance against one of the leading sides in the Premier League has alerted a number of neutral observers to their growing strength.

He said: “It is not normal for us to play against Liverpool because Liverpool is one of the most famous teams in the world. We played against them at Anfield, and we were fighting at the same level as them.

“Everybody could see the game, and it is normal that now people are more interested in the team. But we are the first ones to have our feet on the ground because I told the players the Liverpool game was in the past and the most important thing is the Blackpool game now.”