Middlesbrough’s hopes of keeping Emmanuel Latte Lath this month have been given a boost as Atlanta United have submitted a serious offer for Benfica striker Arthur Cabral.

Latte Lath was a top target for the MLS side this month and they submitted a deal worth up to £20 million over a fortnight ago. While the bid wasn’t outright rejected by Boro at the time, for reasons that are not completely clear the bid hasn’t materialised into a move for the Ivorian striker.

In the meantime, Michael Carrick has continued to select Latte Lath, with the striker maintaining his fine form with two goals in recent weeks. That was until the weekend when he pulled up early in the defeat to Preston North End and had to be withdrawn with a groin problem.

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As yet, the exact extent of the injury suffered by Latte Lath is unknown, with Carrick due to give his next press conference on Friday afternoon ahead of Sunderland's visit next Monday evening. Teesside Live have been told that Latte Lath leaving Boro this month is now ‘highly unlikely’, though it wasn’t made clear whether that was injury-related or just because the MLS move was not going to come to fruition in the end. Boro do have targets in mind if Latte Lath were to leave, with David Strelec a name that emerged in the past week.

But, as Carrick recently warned that Boro did not want to leave business too late after rejecting a huge bid from Ipswich Town in the summer on deadline day, all signs currently point towards the 26-year-old remaining at the Riverside, at least until the end of the season, unless there is an unexpected change between now and Monday's deadline.

Supporting that is the fact that Atlanta have now made their move for Cabral as an alternative, according to MLS transfer expert Tom Bogert. He was the first to report Atlanta’s interest in Latte Lath this month, and also Boro’s deal to sign Aidan Morris from Columbus Crew back in the summer.

Bogert says Atlanta’s bid for the Benfica striker is $18m and is a serious bid, rather than one purely with the intention of trying to hurry Boro and Latte Lath. He also says the Latte Lath deal isn’t completely dead, but Atlanta ‘need to work on other targets’ and ‘can't wait forever’.

Though the MLS transfer window doesn’t officially open until Friday, Atlanta have been keen to get deals over the line for the start of pre-season, with the window merely one for registering players with the league, which doesn’t start until next month in any case. The MLS window runs beyond the British deadline on Monday evening, Boro will almost certainly not allow Latte Lath to leave after Monday when they’d be unable to sign a replacement.