FOR 45 minutes on Saturday, Middlesbrough displayed a worrying character trait – complacency.

In recent years, a Boro side being complacent in January is a story in itself. Usually there is very little to be complacent about.

But this, Aitor Karanka’s first full season as Boro boss, is different.

They have already given Liverpool a fright in the Capital One Cup, dumped Manchester City out of the FA Cup on their own turf and after defeating Brentford last weekend, both Karanka and Lee Tomlin were crowned manager and player of the month respectively.

Everything in the garden that was rosy was made rosier when Patrick Bamford rose to nod Boro into a fifth minute lead against Charlton. But when Johann Gudmundsson brought the Addicks level before half-time, this wasn’t the curse of the manager of the month award, this was simply a case of Middlesbrough believing their own hype.

A range of Hollywood passes, fancy touches and a reluctance to do the basics – this was not Karanka’s Boro in action.

However, when the Spaniard’s side err, it’s an isolated incident – half time saw to that – and Jelle Vossen and Tomlin scored to finish off the Addicks.

Karanka said: "It's a very important win, especially when we've not played our best performance especially in the first-half.

"We didn't really push on from the first goal, it seemed like it was the worst thing for us to have happened to score so early. With all the plaudits after the City win, everyone was saying nice things about Middlesbrough.

“Then when you score after five minutes you can think everything's done and of course they were wrong. We needed to change our mentality and needed to change the way we were playing.”

Victory on Teesside could have put Boro into the top spot of the Championship, but Derby and Bournemouth both picked up victories to maintain their position in the automatic promotion places. Boro are hot on their heels, however, and Karanka stressed the importance of consistency at this stage of the campaign.

"Goal difference could be really important at the end of the season,” said Karanka. “And any point you lose now's difficult to recover again because Bournemouth and Derby are winning their games and we have to keep winning in the same way.

"We need to think about ourselves, not our opponents, when we think we're good, normally we play bad. When we think we're playing against a good team, we play well.

"I know my players and they're learning more in this league and we're improving, there's three months in front of us now and every single point's going to be important. The whole squad is going to be important.

"Football's about goals and when you have our strikers like ours it's important they're all scoring and that's what's happening at the moment. We're going to need all of them.”

Bamford’s fifth-minute goal set the scene for a seemingly straightforward afternoon for Middlesbrough, but Charlton – without a win in the Championship since November – showed flashes of inspiration and were always strong on the counter-attack.

Boro drove forward and Leadbitter almost doubled the lead but saw his low shot deflected wide for a corner with Marko Dmitrovic beaten, while Tomlin showed his range of skills when he was heavily involved in a move that Bamford almost finished off only to be denied by Charlton’s goalkeeper.

But Charlton, quick to respond, saw Gudmundsson go close with a free-kick, before the Addicks midfielder got on the scoresheet when he fired into the roof of the net via Dimi Konstantopoulos after Bamford lost possession in Charlton’s half.

Vossen almost scored just before half-time but his shot whistled wide, but he was not made to wait long for a goal when he struck 120 seconds after the restard.

Tomlin saw a shot blocked by the Charlton defence before getting a second bite of the cherry, this time squaring for the Belgian who made no mistake from eight yards out.

Boro’s second seemed to knock the stuffing out of Charlton, and although they laboured, Boro stayed resolute and Tomlin’s half-volley from Leadbitter’s corner two minutes from the end sealed the victory in style.

Next up for Boro is a trip to Blackpool, where Karanka is expected to make a couple of changes to keep the squad fresh for the FA Cup fifth round game against Arsenal next weekend.

But Boro’s manager is still putting the league first.

“It's the main moment in the league, six games in 20 days after this and after those games we will know a lot more about how things are going to go,” said Karanka, who named an unchanged team for the first time in 44 games on Saturday. “We need to go to Blackpool thinking it's going to be a very difficult game.

"It's the first one [unchanged team] for a long time but this week we've not had games midweek and the last game we played well and beat Brentford. I have to think about the games coming up. We're one point off the top of the table and I have 25 players who're all keen to play.

"Each game's going to be more important than the last and we have to think about ourselves and forget everything because we know that when we play to our capabilities we can beat anyone."