MIDDLESBROUGH are guaranteed a place in the play-offs in the wake of tonight’s 2-1 win over Wolves, but Aitor Karanka will not be satisfied unless his side force their way into the top two during the final three games of the season.

Early goals from Jelle Vossen and Patrick Bamford proved decisive as Boro resisted a powerful second-half surge from Wolves to claim a crucial victory despite the concession of a second-half goal to Bakary Sako.

The win, coupled with Brentford’s defeat at Sheffield Wednesday, means Boro are guaranteed to finish in the top six no matter what happens in their remaining matches against Norwich, Fulham and Brighton.

Tonight’s other results did not go in Boro’s favour, with Bournemouth wining 1-0 at Reading and Norwich winning 2-0 at Leeds, so the Teessiders remain two points adrift of top spot and a point behind the Canaries.

They will return to fourth position if Watford win at Nottingham Forest tonight, but Karanka continues to covet an automatic promotion spot as one of the closest Championship promotion battles in recent years reaches its climax.

“We will have a chance whatever happens because the play-offs are now guaranteed,” said the Boro head coach. “But as we stand here today, we will not be signing for the play-offs.

“We want more. Especially today, this team showed that they want more and proved they are capable of doing it. We have to keep going until the last day, and if we continue to play as we did in the first few minutes, we can get some good results.”

Boro flew out of the traps against Wolves, effectively putting the game to bed inside the opening 11 minutes as Vossen and Bamford both found the target.

They will be hoping for an equally productive opening on Friday, although the standard of opposition could hardly be tougher as they take on a Norwich side who have won 11 of their last 14 matches.

This week’s trip to Carrow Road has looked like being a decisive evening for quite a while now, and while a win in Norfolk could go a long way towards securing a top-two finish, a defeat would make it extremely difficult for Boro to claw their way back into the automatic promotion spots in the final week of the season.

Having already lost at Bournemouth and Watford in the last month, the Teessiders will be desperate to avoid an untimely and unwanted hat-trick, but Karanka is confident his players have learned from their failings at the Goldsands Stadium and Vicarage Road.

“Friday will be a massive game,” he said. “We have to learn from the way we played in the last two games against Rotherham and Wolves, but we also have to learn from the games against Watford and Bournemouth.

“We have to improve on how we played in those games, and we know what we did badly in those matches. We have two days to prepare everything now and we have to make the most of them.”

Unfortunately, Boro will almost certainly have to manage without Jonathan Woodgate, whose season could well be over after he pulled up with a hamstring strain, and Albert Adomah, who was stretchered off during the second half of tonight’s game.

“I am concerned,” said Karanka. “Woody is a player who has played no more than five or six games this season, but he is not just important on the pitch, he also brings us a lot of experience and support.

“His problem was in his hamstrings, and I think it is going to be more than one or two weeks so I don’t think that he can play on Friday.”

Having criticised the poor crowd figures at the Riverside in the build-up to the weekend win over Rotherham, Karanka was quick to praise tonight’s crowd for their unstinting support during an increasingly fraught second half.

“I thought our crowd won the game for us,” he said. “The first half was amazing and we played really well, but in the second half Wolves played much better. Our crowd were brilliant though and supported us right through.”