A FRUSTRATED Neil Warnock felt his Middlesbrough players should have had the points wrapped up in the opening half-hour before they slipped to a 3-2 defeat at Huddersfield Town.

Boro opened the scoring in the 14th minute at the John Smith’s Stadium, with Marvin Johnson firing home, but also missed a succession of early opportunities that came their way as dominated most of the first half.

Britt Assombalonga fired over from two yards after Johnson crossed from the left, and a number of other good opportunities went begging as Boro failed to capitalise on their lead.

They paid the price as Huddersfield scored two goals in eight minutes towards the end of the first half to turn the game on its head, and while Britt Assombalonga equalised from the spot with seven minutes later, Josh Koroma curled home a Huddersfield winner when he was afforded too much space in the box.

Warnock said: “The game should have been put to bed and over in the first half-hour. That’s when you have to win the game. You don’t get chances like we had and not be two or three up.

“It’s a big disappointment really. It gave them the opportunity (to get back into the game), and to go in at half-time 2-1 down was an absolute travesty. I couldn’t really give them a rollocking at half-time because they’d done okay. I thought we were comfortable, it was just silly mistakes that led to the goals.”

Warnock was unhappy with his side’s defending for all three Huddersfield goals, with a series of uncharacteristic errors playing into the home team’s hands.

He said: “We just made errors. It surprised me losing to Norwich with a mistake like that. When you make mistakes, you get punished.

“I don’t think the talking was correct. For one of the goals, it might have been the winner, Paddy (McNair) is telling Dael (Fry) to take one of them, but it didn’t happen.

“It’s a lack of communication today, really, in certain situations. I can’t really fault them for effort, they put a shift in. It’s just disappointing to concede goals like that when we’ve done really well with the defending of late.”

While Assombalonga scored from the spot to level the game up at 2-2, Warnock felt his side should have had another penalty in the dying seconds when Assombalonga appeared to be fouled after Huddersfield goalkeeper Ryan Schofield could only palm away Johnson’s low shot.

The Boro boss said: “We should have had a stonewall penalty towards the end, a minute to go I think it was. Britt has been pulled down.

“The goalie has made a good save, and then Britt’s got there first. He takes nothing of the ball. The referee has said it was just a coming together, but I think when you watch it back, it was a definite penalty.”