Middlesbrough owner Steve Gibson has revealed that the club were never going to find the right manager in their "backyard".

The Championship outfit confirmed the appointment of Aitor Karanka as their new head coach this morning.

The 40-year-old's arrival comes after Tony Mowbray was sacked last month following three years at the Riverside Stadium.

"Football isn't foreign anymore, it's global and we're searching for a first-class coach and that can't be in our backyard," Gibson said in a press conference.

"I was very fond of Tony and I knew his attributes, but in this game you're driven by results and there became an inevitability about it."

Karanka, who was Jose Mourinho's assistant at Real Madrid for three years, is Middlesbrough's first foreign manager.