TONY Mowbray last night admitted his Middlesbrough side “got what they deserved” after some sloppy defending contributed to a 3-2 defeat at Birmingham City.

Despite claiming the lead on two separate occasions, Boro left St Andrew's empty-handed as Marlon King's double and a long-range strike from Wade Elliott secured only Birmingham's fourth home win of the season.

Grant Leadbitter and Scott McDonald were on target for the Teessiders, but their efforts proved in vain as defensive errors undermined the visitors' positive attacking work.

Andre Bikey clumsily fouled King to concede a first-half penalty, Jason Steele should have done better with Elliott's second equaliser and Josh McEachran needlessly conceded possession to spark the move that culminated in Birmingham's 81st-minute winner.

“We gifted them goals, and the bottom line is that you can't gift teams goals and expect to win matches,” said Mowbray, who has now seen his side lose three of their last four games. “You can't come away from home and gift somebody three goals and expect to get anything.

“We probably got what we deserved in the end. Football is about lots of different aspects, ball retention, competitive edge and keeping the ball out of your net as well as scoring at the other end. Most of it was there tonight, but unfortunately the main bit of keeping the ball out of our net wasn't.”

The defensive errors undermined an otherwise effective display, with Boro out-playing their opponents for large periods of the game.

Leadbitter's early opener capped a fine start, while McDonald's second-half strike came at the end of a ten-minute spell of almost complete dominance.

Boro had been similarly on top for periods of their recent 1-0 defeat at Cardiff, another encounter that saw them fail to gain any reward for their efforts.

Had they won last night, they would have been level on points at the top of the table this morning. As it is, they will find themselves six points adrift of top spot if Cardiff beat Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow.

“There were plenty of positives from the night, yet the frustration is we got no points because of our inability to keep the ball out of the net,” said Mowbray. “I haven't said that too many times this year, but we're so disappointed with all the goals.

“We need to try to get out of this league and that means winning football matches. We have to realise the urgency of things. We can't lose three goals of the nature that we did today.

“If they're all over us, passing us off the pitch and putting us under enormous pressure and we let goals in, sometimes you have to accept that. That happened at Blackpool this year – they were very good and we couldn't stop them scoring. But we handed them (Birmingham) the goals here and that's the major disappointment.”

Birmingham boss Lee Clark was the subject of sporadic abuse from his own supporters as Boro bossed the early stages of the game, but the former Newcastle and Sunderland midfielder had the last laugh as his players hit back to claim a victory that had looked unlikely for most of the night.

“We allowed them to dictate the pace of the game in the first half and they hurt us with the quality of their passing,” said Clark. “I'd expect them to be there or thereabouts at the end of the season.

“But we showed great character and resilience to come back into it and we managed to come out on top in the end.”