THE small screen might have shed some light on the controversial decisions that left Wanderers feeling as though fate had dealt them two more bitter blows at The Riverside.

But Sam Allardyce was looking at the bigger picture as he left Teesside on Saturday evening - and he did not like what he saw.

Wanderers had just lost their fifth Premiership game out of eight and, as a result, had dropped into the bottom three - counting the cost of so many missed opportunities.

Not, it must be said, the chances squandered in the closing minutes when they threw caution to the wind and almost snatched an unlikely and undeserved point from Steve McClaren's brilliant Boro. But chances missed in previous games - the shock home defeat by Charlton and the points they worked so hard for but had cruelly snatched away by Liverpool and Arsenal.

"Our start overall has been really, really disappointing," Allardyce conceded. "We know we should be sat on at least 10 points. We didn't really deserve anything at Middlesbrough but we haven't got what we should have got from those other games.

"And the fact that we haven't builds on the pressure because we are in the bottom three or four and unfortunately we are not doing what we were doing last season - drawing games. One of our problems last season was that we felt we were drawing too many games but those draws are turning into defeats now and we have to turn that round. Losing games, as we have been doing, is going to keep us in that position."

Wanderers have been tortured since the Arsenal defeat, knowing that they were unfairly denied Ivan Campo's services and down to 10 men for the last13 dramatic minutes and having learned that Kanu's last gasp winner should have been disallowed for a clear offside. They may find fault with referee Clive Wilkes on this occasion for awarding the corner from which Ugo Ehiogu scored Boro's first goal on 23 minutes and a foul by Joseph Job on Anthony Barness in the build-up to Geremi scoring the decisive second.

But Allardyce, who quashed suggestions that Geremi was offside when he raced clear of the Wanderers' cover, gave the other two decisions just a cursory glance. "Somebody told me it shouldn't have been a corner," he said.

"As for the challenge, I don't think the player played the ball - he played the man. But I'll have to review them both and, if that's the case I'll make my feelings known to the Referees' Association."

Instead he conceded that Boro deserved the points and was more concerned with his own players' failure to get to grips with a team they knew would be on a high after their recent push into the top three.

"We knew we'd have a lively start on our hands," he added. "We worked on it and made the players aware of the interchange of movement from Boksic, Job and Maccarone and the late arrivals of Greening and Geremi. But we didn't cope with that very well. We had a little bit of fortune getting away with the chances they created but that's what you've got to take advantage of.

"But it was a very good header for the goal and I don't think Mick Whitlow could have done any more than he did. I thought it was timed very well and there was power in the header. Unfortunately when the second one came we were having our best spell. That was very disappointing because we'd started to create chances.

"But it's a worry that we are creating them and not putting them in the back of the net.

"I'm very concerned that we aren't getting the points on the board and that's what counts. This was our worst performance since Fulham and it shows what can happen when you don't turn performances into results, which is what has been happening to us. You lose your confidence and then you lose your performances and it becomes difficult to get away from the bottom.

"We're confident we've got the players and the ability to do that but we must turn our chances into goals and give our defenders something to hang onto, something to defend.

"When we start doing that we'll get better and pick more points up. But we have to start soon."