Karanka upset with Boro fans after Hammers defeat

(Reuters) - Aitor Karanka betrayed signs of the growing pressure after another damaging loss for his Middlesbrough side as he made the always hazardous decision to criticise his own team's fans following the 3-1 defeat at home to West Ham United. Boro's Spanish boss was unhappy with the crowd baying for his players to take an alien long-ball approach in the dying seconds of the defeat, describing the atmosphere at the Riverside as "awful". Karanka claimed his players "deserve more respect" from their supporters after another defeat saw Boro slide ever closer to the relegation zone. Boro were chasing the game in the dying minutes after Andy Carroll's first-half double, either side of Cristhian Stuani's equaliser, had put the Hammers in control. After pushing forward to try to gain a point as the game entered stoppage time, substitute Jonathan Calleri notched a third for the visitors. The fans' cries for an urgent long-ball approach near the end prompted Karanka to suggest they needed to remember just where the club had come from under his management which has always emphasised the importance of a more thoughtful approach. "I was really upset with the last 10 minutes. We didn't play in the way we have to play, in the way we know how to play and it was because the atmosphere was awful today," Karanka told reporters. "The fans demanded a lot of the players. We don't know how to play in that way. Playing in that way, we didn't create one chance and the team was broken on the pitch." Asked if the fans were demanding too much of his players, Karanka said: "Yes. When you don't have the experience, and I don't know how many thousand people are asking for long balls, at the end you have to play long balls. "It's a style we don't know how to play. We didn't play one game or one minute in the Championship like that when we got promoted and it's something we have to fix. While I'm here, we won't be playing long balls. "They (the fans) knew this season would be a tough season for everybody but they can't forget where the club was last season, two, three, four, five or six seasons ago." As if to prove his point, Boro had earlier scored a wonderfully worked team goal, finished by Stuani, and Karanka insisted he was "really proud" that his players tried their best in every training session and game. (Reporting by Ian Chadband,; Editing by Neville Dalton)