MICHAEL CARRICK insists Middlesbrough have a plan in place for if Chuba Akpom leaves the club in the next few days.

Akpom was not part of Carrick’s squad for this afternoon’s 3-0 defeat at Coventry City with the head coach admitting before kick-off that last season’s leading scorer was excluded from the matchday group because Boro had “received bids” for his services.

Lens and Ajax are both understood to have submitted formal offers for Akpom, who has entered the final year of his contract at the Riverside, with French media sources claiming the former have agreed a package that is worth around €15m once add-ons are included.

READ MORE:

Boro are already in advanced discussions with Atalanta over Ivorian forward Emmanuel Latte Lath, with an agreement over a permanent transfer understood to be close. The Teessiders have also agreed a deal with Danish club Silkeborg for left-back Lukas Engel.

However, Akpom’s departure would almost certainly necessitate further transfer business, something Carrick claims has already been discussed, with a plan in place.

“Regardless of any individual, there’s a plan of ifs and buts in terms of what might happen,” said Carrick, whose side have now lost both of their opening two league matches.

“You can’t plan for every single eventuality, so that’s only true to a point, but as a club we have certain things that we’ve talked about and certain ideas about what we’d want to do if other things happened. We’ve certainly got eventualities that we’ve planned for.”

Akpom’s evolving transfer situation overshadowed the build-up to this afternoon’s game, with Carrick admitting he is having to deal with a fair amount of uncertainty with the transfer window not due to close for another two-and-a-half weeks.

“You’ve got to understand this time of the year and the window,” he said. “Things are thrown at you, situations are thrown at you, and we’re just trying to make the best of whatever it is.

“Some of it is within our control, but some of it is out of our control. That’s the transfer window for you.”

Having fallen behind to Matt Godden’s first-half opener this afternoon, Boro had opportunities to restore parity at the start of the second half.

Morgan Rogers fired narrowly wide after a mazy run and Sammy Silvera shot over from the edge of the six-yard box as the Teessiders enjoyed their best spell of the game, but Coventry had got themselves back on top by the time Haji Wright doubled their lead with 20 minutes remaining. Darragh Lenihan’s 90th-minute own goal then completed the scoring.

Carrick admitted his side had made errors, but did not feel his players deserved to finish on the wrong end of a 3-0 scoreline.

“I didn’t think it was a 3-0 game,” he said. “We did a number of good things in the game. I thought they were a good team and it was a tight game for spells. They had a little bit extra, and then we had a little bit extra of it, but in the end, goals change games.

“We weren’t quite able to take the chances that we created, and that went against us. We have to do better. We’ve got to be better, but at the same time, the first goal was a deflection that fell to him and the third goal was a deflection too. Then the other goal is from a corner, which we need to defend better.”