Middlesbrough suffered a thumping home defeat when Matej Vydra's hat-trick secured a 3-0 win for Derby County at the Riverside on Saturday afternoon.  

Boro's miserable afternoon was compounded by Daniel Ayala's red card on the hour mark as the Rams leapfrogged them and muscled their way into the play-off spots.

Defeated manager Garry Monk said: "I think the right word is shooting ourselves in the foot.

"The second half was horrible, everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. There were too many individual mistakes and lapses in concentration and that was our undoing.

"It cost us goals and cost us points, it's very frustrating. We've seen that when we cut out these mistakes we win games.

"We were not clinical or ruthless enough in that first half, when we played some of our best football.

"They were ruthless and clinical. You need to take your chances. The players are as frustrated as everyone.

"We felt like in this recent period we'd been cutting out the errors. We didn't deserve to go in at half time, we should have gone in with a two or three goal lead.

"Second half, you're thinking if we go out and perform like we did in the first half, we can get back into the game but then we make the errors that we did and cost ourselves."

The Verdict

Something is not quite right at Boro. When they look like they've turned a corner, they start to stumble again and they cannot get any kind of consistency into their performances.

The fact that they are still up around the play offs despite this is a promising sign for their fans and they will hope that greater consistency will come in the second half of the season.

Monk also needs his players to step up and start taking responsibility for cutting out the errors in their game.

Boro fans - where did the game yesterday go wrong in your opinion? Let us know in the comments below...