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Aitor Karanka told his Middlesbrough players to forget the result and keep the performance after losing 2-1 to Manchester United in heart-breaking fashion.

Boro go into 2017 four points clear of the drop zone, despite their New Year's Eve defeat at Old Trafford.

A shock result looked on the cards when the visitors opened the scoring through Grant Leadbitter , who latched onto an Alvaro Negredo knock down before slotting the ball into the net in the 67th minute

Boro withstood heavy pressure from the hosts before conceding a 85th minute equaliser from Anthony Martial.

Little more than a minute later United grabbed the winner through Paul Pogba's header.

But a proud Karanka praised his players in his post match press conference.

“You can imagine my reaction to the match,” he said.

“I don't like to lose but apart from the result I told the players the performance has been very good and once again we've competed against a top team and we were winning until the last five minutes.

“Competing the way we have today, we will win games against teams playing to stay in the Premier League.

“Once again we showed we are a consistent team, we had chances to score.”

The nature of United's goals disappointed Karanka but he was quick to point out the number of quality players his close friend Jose Mourinho deployed in search of an equaliser.

“Imagine, you are playing Man United and you are finishing the game against a team playing Pogba, (Zlatan) Ibrahimovic, (Henrikh) Mkhitaryan, (Juan) Mata, (Marcus) Rashford and Martial to beat you so we are doing something good and we are really pleased with the players.

“They have to forget the result and keep the performance because I told them they should be really proud of the performance today.”

Karanka, who revealed that Mourinho said 'sorry' to him after the match, admitted United's route one equaliser was similar to Burnley's winner on Boxing Day.

“We conceded a similar goal in the last match and today they had a lot of players who can create problems and long balls.

“It's not easy to mark Ibrahimovic and then when it's not Ibrahimovic it's Martial and when it's not Martial it's Rashford, so it's difficult but I said the most important thing for us is to add experience and we have added experience and we are in a good position in the table.”

The big talking point after the game was the United goal that was disallowed when Ibrahimovic was adjudged to have fouled Victor Valdes when scoring in the 39th minute.

The home fans booed the Boro keeper for feigning injury after that but Karanka defended his compatriot when asked about the incident.

“I don't know what the Man United crowd thought but I asked him (Valdes) at half time and he told me he didn't know if he could play the second half so that is the only thing I can say.”