Latte Lath was one of only three Boro players to reach double figures for Championship goals last season, even though he left the club in the final few days of the January transfer window.
The striker’s £22.5m departure to Atlanta United came when Boro were occupying a play-off place in sixth position, but the club’s form tailed off badly in the second half of the season and they eventually finished tenth.
While the Boro hierarchy opted not to pursue a like-for-like replacement for Latte Lath in the final days of the January window, they did complete a loan deal for Sevilla forward Kelechi Iheanacho. The move turned out to be an unsuccessful one, with Iheanacho scoring just one goal in his 15 appearances from mid-February onwards.
Despite the best efforts of Tommy Conway, Boro missed Latte Lath’s eye for goal and ability to stretch an opposition defence in the second half of the season, but Carrick insists it would be wrong to pinpoint the Ivorian’s departure as the key reason for his side’s failure to finish in the top six.
“You can look at all sorts of things,” he said. “In football, you lose players at times – whether that’s because of a transfer, injury or suspension. That’s part of it.
READ MORE:
“We’ve lost players over time here and that’s just how it is. You deal with it, and you move on. I believe we had a good enough group to manage that.
“I don’t think it’s a one player thing. It’s about us all collectively as a group. In the end, over the course of the whole season, we ended up not getting enough to achieve what we wanted to.”
Carrick spelled out his desire to continue as Boro boss in the wake of the final-day defeat at Coventry that confirmed the club’s play-off fate.
Senior Boro officials are conducting a ‘thorough review’ into the team’s performance last season before deciding on a future course of action, with Carrick’s position as head coach sure to be one of the key issues discussed.
