Gary Speed's hopes of at least a point in his first game in charge were dashed by a rare Chris Morgan error at Middlesbrough but the new manager backed his skipper and refused to let the defeat mask a committed team performance.

Morgan's failure to deal with a ball that Boyd subsequently angle past Simonsen for the only goal of the game was all that separated two teams who both found making chances difficult but Speed was quick to absolve the centre-back:

"I certainly don't blame 'Morgs' for the defeat, it is just one of those things you can't legislate for. The fact is that nine times out of ten Chris does things that win us games and I don't need to say anything to him at all because he will be hurting anyway.

"If the mistake had been made further up the pitch we might have had chance to put things right but Boyd was through and finished well.

"Right now, straight after the game, I am very disappointed because we did so much that was right. We passed it quite well, kept the ball and limited 'Boro - who will still be one of the favourites to go up - to basically just that one chance.

"I can't fault the lads' effort and attitude in the way that they went about the job and I don't think they got the reward they deserved."

Speed and new coach John Carver had had little time to work with the squad after a frantic few days last week and he is expecting to be able to improve on that in the next few days:

There were good and bad parts to our display but with a full week without a game ahead of us there are plenty of things for us to work on.

"We limited Middlesbrough but the other side of the coin is that we didn't create much ourselves and maybe Ched Evans was a bit isolated at times. He and 'Cressy' were probably our two best players today so we will have to support them better.

"I thought we might be able to get something from set-plays but our delivery was poor and maybe part of it is my fault through trying to give them too much info at one time."