GARRY MONK has challenged his misfiring Middlesbrough players to radically improve their concentration levels if they are not to see their promotion hopes disappear amid a succession of sloppy individual errors.

Boro slipped back out of the play-off places at the weekend as they crashed to a 3-0 home defeat at the hands of Derby County, with their third Riverside reverse of the season leaving them eight points adrift of the automatic promotion spots.

They are three points behind the Rams, who boast a game in hand, with Derby having benefited from some desperate Boro defending as they leapfrogged their opponents to move back into the top six.

Martin Braithwaite and Daniel Ayala were both at fault as Matej Vydra scored Derby’s second goal from the penalty spot, with the latter compounding his error as he was rightly dismissed for a reckless foul on David Nugent. Darren Randolph’s miscued clearance then handed Vydra his hat-trick goal on a plate.

It is not the first time Boro have paid a high price for an individual aberration this season, with Ayala having been badly at fault as his mistake enabled Wolves to claim a 1-0 win on the opening weekend of the season and Adama Traore having conceded a decisive penalty in last month’s home defeat to Cardiff City.

Monk thought he had ironed out the errors as his side embarked on a recent three-game winning run, but Saturday’s sloppiness has taken Boro back to square one.

“The whole of the second half was horrible,” said the Boro boss, “And it’s been a problem in certain games this season where, like that, we’ve made individual errors and shot ourselves in the foot. It’s happened when we could easily have been in a position to win games or pick up points. It’s cost us goals and cost us points. Any team that wants to be successful, or reach its dreams and ambitions, you can’t afford that.

“It’s very hard to put your finger on. It’s nothing to do with the football side of things – the tactics or the set-up or anything like that. The players are delivering in that sense. Whether it’s a concentration thing, or a mentality thing in certain moments, I don’t know, but you don’t expect it.

“And you certainly don’t expect the number of times we’ve done it this season. If you look at the games we’ve lost or the goals we’ve conceded, the vast majority have come from our own undoing. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot, and that’s disappointing, but the players are as frustrated and disappointed as everyone.”

The most frustrating aspect of Saturday’s display was that Boro were the better side for the opening 45 minutes. Trailing to Vydra’s 13th-minute opener, they dominated the first half in terms of both possession and territory.

Scott Carson made a fine one-handed save to keep out Britt Assombalonga’s close-range strike, before both Assombalonga and Fabio Da Silva failed to find the target with headers as half-time approached.

The message at the break was, ‘More of the same’, but things unravelled quickly after the interval and by the time referee Simon Hooper blew his final whistle, Boro were a disorganised mess.

“That’s the frustrating bit,” said Monk. “You’ve seen from the games we’ve won, and even the way we played in that first half, what we’re capable of. If we play like that, we win games. It’s as simple as that.

“Ultimately, though, 80 or 85 per cent of the goals we’ve conceded this season have been from our own undoing, where we’ve shot ourselves in the foot with an individual mistake or a lack of concentration at a crucial moment.

“I guess the positive of that is knowing that if you can cut those things out, you’re winning games and collecting a lot of points. But if you don’t cut them out, then it’s going to cost you. It’s unfortunate for us that it’s costing us goals and points.

“We’ve been working on it, but it obviously needs more work to go on. The players are as frustrated as anyone else. It’s quite strange, we’ve probably made as many individual mistakes and costly errors as you would expect throughout a whole season. We’ve done them already. We recognise how costly it is, but we felt we were coming through that. We’ve had another setback though.”

Or to be more precise, another series of setbacks. Some of this season’s most reliable performers were found wanting at the weekend, with Braithwaite and Randolph both committing uncharacteristic errors.

Ayala’s meltdown was the most unexpected, with the Spaniard dangling a leg in the penalty area as Vydra broke clear before hacking at Nugent when the former Boro striker was attempting to turn inside his own half.

It was a ridiculous rush of blood from a player boasting more than 180 senior appearances, and as Birmingham boss Gary Rowett conceded, it came at a time when Boro were more than capable of clawing their way back into the game.

“To be honest, I was really surprised and a little bit disappointed when he was not sent off earlier (for the foul that resulted in the penalty),” said Rowett. “At the time, I didn’t actually know he had already been booked, and I said to the lads (on the bench), I wasn’t sure if it was a (straight) red card. I thought it might have been, but for me, it was an obvious yellow.

“Joe Ledley did something far more innocuous later on, and ended up getting booked for it, so I felt it was a yellow and he should have gone.

“I don’t like to have a go at opposition players, but I’m sure Garry Monk will be disappointed that he (Ayala) made a very bad decision at 2-0 down to give the referee the opportunity to book him.

“Even at 2-0 down, if they get one back, you know you’re going to have an edgy last few moments, and so the sending off made the game a lot easier for us and we controlled the game after that point.”