Middlesbrough boss Aitor Karanka denies he's trying to be sacked.

Gaston Ramirez's agent this week alleged Karanka threatened to quit Boro if the Uruguayan playmaker was sold to Leicester.

And while Karanka yesterday laughed this off, it did not seem a completely inconceivable claim given the past events of his three-year Teesside tenure.

Karanka, 43, told The Sun: “I don't know how many times I have supposedly left the club or been sacked – and I am still here.

“I am in the place where I want to be and those other things, I don't care.

“With Gaston, never did I threaten to leave the club because the club knew, from the first meeting, that Gaston couldn't leave because we didn't have the replacement.

“Last year, people say I left. I never left.

"People say I had problems with the team, but without me they lost the game at Charlton and when I came back we didn't lose once.

“The main thing for me to show how I am is the commitment of the players.

“If I had been bad for the club, I would have been sacked for sure.

“If I had been bad for the group, they wouldn't perform in the way they have performed."