Bogeyman Nugent set to miss Clarets clash

Nugent – who has nine career goals against the Clarets with Preston, Portsmouth and Leicester – was dismissed after appearing to barge Blues midfielder Stephen Gleeson.

Nugent, who scored six goals for Burnley on loan in 2009/10, is likely to serve a three-game ban , which would see him miss Boro’s with Burnley, Brighton and Blackburn.

Karanka said: “It’s disappointing because you never want to have a player sent off, but if I think as a player, sometimes you can understand.

“It’s difficult to play every single day always trying to win the games, always trying to be a good team that is polite with the referee, and every single team which comes here wastes time.

“The referees are permitting them to waste time and sometimes you can drive yourself crazy.

“But we have to learn and David has to learn.

“You can imagine (how he feels).

“We don’t know how many games he will miss and he knows he made a mistake.

“But we have other players and we have a game on Tuesday (against Burnley) to try and forget this game - because it’s not a good point.

“I don’t know the rules 100% but I don’t think we’ll do anything as sometimes it becomes worse.”

Karanka looked back on a frustrating afternoon: “It was frustrating because we couldn’t score one goal.

“We could have scored four in the first half and the score could have ended 6-3.

“Against Ipswich we scored two goals, today we had chances but we didn’t score them and for that reason we couldn’t win the game.

“But the performance, especially the first 35 minutes with the conditions on the pitch, the rain, the wind - we were playing really well. We had a lot of chances.”