Michael Carrick expects both Emmanuel Latte Lath and Ben Doak to be in the Middlesbrough squad at Portsmouth this weekend despite mounting transfer speculation involving the pair.

Things appear to have quietened down on Doak for the time being at least, with Liverpool's current £30 million valuation said to be putting potential suitors off and handing Boro real hope of keeping the loan star for the rest of the campaign. He's now expected to return to the Boro squad this weekend after Carrick said he rested him in last week's FA Cup defeat to Blackburn Rovers.

However, Emmanuel Latte has been the subject of an official transfer offer in the last seven days, with Atlanta United tabling a bid said to be worth up to £20m. As things stand, that offer is understood to remain on the table and talks are ongoing between the two clubs. Despite that, Latte Lath remains a Boro player and is set to be involved as per at Fratton Park unless anything were to suddenly change between now and Saturday - which Carrick appeared to rule out.

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The Boro boss said: "Yeah, 100% [he'll be involved at the weekend. He's 100% with us. Manu is our player, he's trained fantastic this week. Very, very well this week actually. He's looking forward to the game on Saturday. A big part of my job is communicating with the staff and players and managing different scenarios. It's not an exact plan, it depends what pops up. But 100% I'm involved in discussions.

"We’ve spoken about it for quite some time and I think we understand how it works for sure. We’ve got a lot of good players here at different stages in their career and, just like we’ll be looking at other players from other teams, teams will be looking at our players. We understand that and something you have to accept really and take it as a positive that we have a lot of good players here."

On Doak's availability and current situation, Carrick added: "We understand the situation. From our point of view, there's zero distractions. Ben has been the same, he's trained fantastically well. I'm happy and delighted with the way it's going."

As both of those potential outgoing deals bubble away in the background, Boro are themselves attempting to strengthen their own squad. Both star men would need replacing if they were to leave, while there are other areas of the side being explored.

One of those is the possible return of Ryan Giles, with Hull City indicating to Boro that they are ready to do business again this month after talks over a deal in the summer ultimately stalled and then collapsed. Asked about a potential Giles return though, Carrick refused to be drawn on speculation.

"There’s absolutely no way that I’m going to talk about individual players from other clubs," he said. "There are so many different rumours and speculation, some true and some false, well quite a lot false. All I can say is that we’re working hard to improve things.

"Whoever that may be, but we are largely happy with the group that we have. It’s getting that balance right. At this stage we are positive that we can try and improve things but still largely happy with what we’ve got."