ANALYSIS: Middlesbrough pay a heavy price for their defensive mistakes

Last season, in the Championship, Boro might well have got away with some of their errors. In the second tier, strikers tend to be less clinical and midfielders can take the wrong option when the pressure it at its most intense.

In the top-flight, though, wrong moves tend to be punished. So when a Crystal Palace side searching for its first win of the season was presented with two golden opportunities to beat Victor Valdes in the Boro goal, the outcome of both incidents was never really in doubt.

The Teessiders scored a goal of their own, and could point to two strong penalty appeals that were turned down as evidence of their misfortune. Ultimately, though, they were masters of their own downfall.

Their start remains a strong one, and they remain in the top half of the table, a situation Aitor Karanka and his staff would have taken at the start of the campaign. Nevertheless, they have received a salutary reminder of just how unforgiving the Premier League can be. Ensuring they do not continue to receive such reminders will be one of the keys to determining how they fare in the next few months.

“We gave away a couple of cheap goals, which is not like us, but it is a learning curve,” said centre-half Ben Gibson. “In the Premier League, you are going to get punished if you are not at 100 per cent.

“We made mistakes but we win and lose as a team. And if we look at it from a team aspect, we have to hold our hands up and say we probably should not have made those mistakes.”

That the mistakes were so uncharacteristic made them even harder to explain. George Friend has been one of Middlesbrough’s most influential and consistent players throughout Karanka’s reign, but this was a day to forget for the full-back as he inadvertently had a hand in both Palace goals.

Having conceded a throw-in when he failed to control a long ball from Adam Clayton in the 16th minute, he joined Stewart Downing in failing to close down Wilfried Zaha close to the right touchline. Zaha crossed, and Christian Benteke rose above Daniel Ayala, who was also defensively culpable, to head home the opener.

Friend’s second error was even more catastrophic, with the left-back hesitating for what seemed like an eternity before prodding James McArthur’s pass into Zaha’s path, enabling the winger to slot a simple finish beyond Valdes.

With both Ayala and Gibson looking shaky on occasion, and Clayton suffering a rare off day as he failed to adequately close down the Palace players breaking from midfield, Boro looked vulnerable whenever their opponents broke in numbers, particularly in the first half.

Valdes made an excellent first-half save to prevent Andros Townsend scoring from the edge of the area, but if Boro are to keep a comfortable cushion between themselves and the relegation zone, they will have to defend as they did at West Brom in their last away game rather than repeating their error-strewn weekend display.

“We have had good success defensively in the last two years, and hopefully, this season, it will be just the same,” said Gibson. “But we have to learn from this. We have to acclimatise quickly.

“This league is very unforgiving because you play against the best teams in the world, and if you give them an opportunity, they are going to take it.

“You are playing against better-quality players, so they need less opportunities to score.  The opportunities do not have to be as good. In fact, sometimes, they don’t even need an opportunity to break you down. We saw that in the first game against Stoke with the (Xherdan) Shaqiri goal. So we have to learn from this and move on.”

Boro’s defensive struggles might not have been as damaging had they been causing problems at the other end, but while they rallied in the second half as they threatened to stage a grandstand finish, they struggled to break down a well-drilled Palace defence.

The decision to start with Viktor Fischer in the ‘number ten’ role ahead of Gaston Ramirez was misguided, and for all that Karanka claims the latter was fatigued as a result of his international exertions, the brightness of his display in the final half-hour suggests he might well have been capable of starting the game.

Fischer’s display was much-improved from the poor performance he produced on his debut at Fulham, but he does not look like a central midfielder who will link play with a lone striker.

With neither Cristhian Stuani nor Stewart Downing making too many breaks into the box, Alvaro Negredo found himself isolated on occasion, and while Karanka is unlikely to veer too far away from his preferred 4-2-3-1 formation, he will have to find a way of ensuring his main striker receives adequate support.

That said, though, Boro might well have escaped with a point had referee Neil Swarbrick awarded a second-half penalty. The hosts cancelled out Benteke’s opener when Ayala powered home a sensational header from Downing’s corner seven minutes before half-time, and both Negredo and Gibson came close with efforts that were saved by Steve Mandanda.

For much of the second half, it was the Teessiders on the front foot, but while they created two strong penalty appeals, neither was awarded. The first saw Scott Dann deflect the ball onto his own arm as he attempted to clear Downing’s cross, and the second, which came in the final minute, saw the ball strike Damien Delaney’s arm as it rebounded around the six-yard box following a save from Mandanda.

“It probably feels a bit different to lose a Premier League game, although I wouldn’t say it’s any more or less painful than last season,” said Gibson. “We have created a winning culture in our dressing room over the last couple of years, and that does not go overnight just because we are playing against better teams.

“We still expect to win football matches, particularly at the Riverside. So we are hurting that we lost this game and hurting even more because it is at home. But we will learn from it and turn it around quickly.”