MIDDLESBROUGH 0 LEEDS UNITED 1

DISAPPOINTING? Undoubtedly. An opportunity missed? You’d have to say so given that Bournemouth lost at Brentford later in the afternoon. But a major cause for concern with 14 games of a nail-bitingly close promotion battle still to go? It’s time to retain a sense of perspective. If Boro play like this in those 14 matches, they’ll surely end the season with a place in the top-flight.

This wasn’t a ‘typical Boro’ example of stark underperformance when the pressure had been ratcheted up. It’s possible to quibble about the quality of some of the Teessiders’ finishing given that 16 efforts on goal failed to produce a breakthrough, and despite a glut of attacking substitutions, the hosts gradually ran out of steam during a second-half display that was not at the same level as the football they produced before the break.

But on another afternoon, and faced with another goalkeeper who was not in the same inspired form as Leeds’ Marco Silvestri, Boro could quite easily have won at a canter.

As it was, they slipped to a first home defeat since August courtesy of Alex Mowatt’s deflected third-minute strike and dropped to second in the table, two points adrift of Derby County.

More worrying is the fact that the gap to the final play-off place, currently filled by Watford, has shrunk to just four points, but again it is important not to get too alarmist just yet. There will be plenty of twists and turns between now and the start of May, and Saturday’s setback will quickly be forgotten as long as normal service is resumed when Bolton visit the Riverside tomorrow.

“We can’t be too upset,” said Albert Adomah, who was one of a number of players to miss an inviting opportunity during a one-sided first half that was dominated by the hosts. “We worked hard to get to the top of the table, but over the course of a season, you’re always going to get days like this. We know there’s still 14 games left, and over those matches, anything can still happen.

“You never want to lose, but I guess if you’re going to, it’s important to do it in that manner. It wasn’t like we froze or anything like that.

“There are games where we have been winning, but we’ve still come in at half-time and had a real rollocking off the manager. Believe or not, at half-time here, the manager came in and said everything was perfect. That made all of us think, and we weren’t expecting it, but I guess it summed the game up. We did what we wanted to, but just couldn’t take our chances.”

Those chances came at regular intervals, especially before the break, but tended to founder on the goalkeeping of Silvestri or the equally impressive defensive contribution of centre-half Sol Bamba, who produced a towering display to frustrate Boro’s attackers.

Silvestri’s first save came in the 11th minute as he beat away Kike’s fiercely-driven shot, and by the time he headed down the tunnel at the break, the Italian had produced five more excellent stops to deny Jelle Vossen, twice, Albert Adomah, Adam Clayton and Kike.

His best save was an acrobatic effort that tipped Kike’s deflected shot on the turn over the crossbar, and on the one occasion when Silvestri was beaten, by Vossen’s prodded shot, the retreating Giuseppe Bellusci was on hand to hack the ball clear.

Silvestri’s second-half workload was less onerous, although he still made fine saves from Kike and Vossen, and if there was to be a criticism of Aitor Karanka’s input, it was that he appeared to fall into the trap of throwing on too many attacking players in an attempt to chase the game.

In the closing stages of the second half, Boro were effectively playing a 4-2-4 formation with substitutes Lee Tomlin and Patrick Bamford on the wings, but things became ragged and the chances dried up. Nevertheless, there will not be too many games this season where the Teessiders ask so many questions of an opposition defence.

“To be honest, it reminded me a bit of last season, where we were creating nine or ten chances in a game, not really taking them, and then the team we were playing against would get one chance and score,” said Adomah.

“That’s football sometimes, and it happens to everyone. The most important thing is to make sure it doesn’t become a habit and we put it right on Tuesday. We had plenty of chances, but unfortunately we couldn’t tuck them away.”

Leeds took the one chance that mattered, and in the wake of Ben Gibson’s error at Birmingham last Wednesday, it was frustrating from a Middlesbrough point of view that the damage was self-inflicted once again.

Tomas Mejias was making his first league start since August in place of the suspended Dimi Konstantopoulos, and just as his performances at the start of the season were littered with errors, so he was at fault again.

His attempt at a quick throw out to Grant Leadbitter was intercepted by Lewis Cook, and the Leeds midfielder fed Mowatt, whose shot found the bottom left-hand corner of the net via a slight deflection off Gibson.

Leeds barely attacked again until Bamba headed wide from the edge of the six-yard box in first-half stoppage time, but given that Scott Wootton headed Luke Murphy’s free-kick against the crossbar at the start of the second half, it would be unfair on the visitors to classify their performance as purely a smash-and-grab raid.

They threatened Boro on the break in the second half, and while Tomas Kalas made some useful interceptions as he partnered Gibson at centre-half instead of Kenneth Omeruo, a lack of height at the heart of the Teessiders’ back four was apparent in the continued absence of the injured Daniel Ayala.

“Middlesbrough are a good side, there’s no two ways about it,” said Leeds boss Neil Redfearn. “They had us on the ropes at times. We had to defend, and we did.

“I think they’ll go up. There aren’t many teams that have done that to us, in terms of possession and creating things around the box. I thought they were outstanding, and the people at Boro have to take a lot of credit for that.”