Lee Bowyer has lamented the “schoolboy error” which ultimately cost Charlton in their defeat to Middlesbrough.

Ben Purrington’s pass from a throw-in was picked off before Rudy Gestede teed up Paddy McNair from the flank for a close-range finish.

Despite Charlton producing an improved second half, they failed to find an equaliser as their defeat saw them drop into the Championship’s relegation zone in 22nd place.

Bowyer said: “I think we deserved something from the game, but you can't give teams 1-0 leads and we've done that in the last two weeks.

“You keep doing that you're not going to win games, it's as simple as that. We ain't good enough to give teams 1-0 leads and to try and come back and win. We ain't that good.

“We have to learn from it. You can't afford to just gift them goals. Same as last week ... it's a schoolboy thing, just basic. So poor.

“Ten-yard pass? Could I ask you to go out there and make the ten-yard pass that he [Purrington] missed? And you would do it? It's not hard.

“That's what frustrates me because I see them every day in training and they make those passes, and we didn't take our chances. Second half, we had three clear-cut chances and we didn't take them.

“We've come away with nothing when we probably deserved a bit more than that.”

The defeat to Middlesbrough is Charlton’s third in consecutive games and yet again involved another defensive error leading to a goal.

It follows on from last week’s 4-0 hammering at the hands of fellow relegation rivals Huddersfield Town, when Karlan Grant picked off Deji Oshilaja inside the Addicks’ box.

This week, it was a narrow 1-0 defeat in which they just could not find the finishing touch.

Bowyer added: “The second half showed that we're a decent side when we do things properly. We've got a lot of games [left], nine to go, and we've got enough points there to keep up in this division.

“I still believe we'll do it.

“Today was game that everyone though, on paper, 'Middlesbrough at home. This is game that you have to win'. Nothing changes. It would have been better if we won, it would have been easier if we won, but football ain't like that sometimes.

“Sometimes you have to do it the hard way and we're definitely doing that at the moment. We're definitely making it harder for ourselves.

“I'll put my arm around Ben on Monday, I'll do that because I wasn't too nice to him, as you can imagine, at half-time. Or to a lot of them, really.

“I'll put my arm around Ben and say, 'Right, that's it. Done. Come on, let's move on'. That's the game.

“I made mistakes when I played. Everyone makes mistakes. It's how you handle it.”