Kim Hellberg offers his verdict on Middlesbrough's draw with Cardiff City and the decision to start with Will Lankshear on the bench

Kim Hellberg admits he made some selection mistakes for Middlesbrough’s draw with Cardiff City, but insisted that resting Will Lankshear was not one of them.

Lankshear was forced to come off the bench for Boro and rescue them a point, as Hellberg’s tinkered side found themselves 2-0 down at half-time at the Riverside.

But after Tommy Conway halved the deficit seven minutes after the restart - and Lankshear’s introduction - the striker then netted his 11th goal of the season to complete Boro’s comeback.

Despite having just shy of 30 minutes to then go and win the game, Boro had to settle for a point, and Hellberg insisted the Lankshear selection decision was a necessary one - and not one that influenced Boro’s disappointing first half.

Hellberg said: "He was absolutely brilliant [about being on the bench]. There was no problem at all. I think it's sometimes a bigger thing for people around.

“Honestly, if you ask me what I did get wrong, I think I did get it wrong with some other players that I maybe should have rotated, but not this one. That's my honest opinion, and that's why I'm here. I'm trying to be as honest as possible.”

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Explaining why he made the decision, he continued: “We needed fresh legs up top in some ways, to press a team that has been, up to this day, the most ball-possession team and with the most in-the-box touches.

“They’re very high in terms of creating chances in the league and we needed to match that in terms of energy.

“As a coach, over time, you also have to create depth in the squad. I think that's an important thing. It doesn't matter if you're Real Madrid or Middlesbrough, if you're going to pick the same 11 players, we're going to say in three months that we have no depth.

“You need to manage your players in this league and look into numbers. We have a lot of players that have no pre-season. Will is one of those who come late and has been doing a lot of good things.

“He’s been absolutely brilliant, and sometimes you need to also protect him. It was very difficult for me to do that with Hayden [Hackney] last season - he had to play every minute, every second.

“So trying to find that balance is very difficult. It helps if you win the game when you do it, because otherwise you get a lot of criticism for it. You just take it and move on.”

While Lankshear did inspire Boro’s comeback in the second half, Hellberg didn’t feel there was too much difference in the general performances of either half, with Boro still creating a number of first half chances.

Instead, it was two poor moments defensively that was Boro’s first-half downfall, with both goals conceded far too easy from a Boro perspective.

Offering his overall match reflections, Hellberg concluded: “I'm disappointed that we drew the game. I think over 90 minutes in both the first and second half we should have a better result from that. So it's a disappointment.

“I think we were quite good in the first half, to be fair, if I'm going to be honest with all the chances. If you look at it, we created as many things I think in the first half as the second half, but it's that we conceded two absolutely terrible goals, and if you do that and not score on all those chances…

“I thought we succeeded in our pressing, but when we won the ball we were a little bit sloppy. There should have been more chances from that.

“That's what pains me a bit in the first half, and then defending the situation very poorly, which means that we go in 2-0 down.

“Then the second half I think it's an okay second half, we created some chances, but it’s still only an alright second half performance. I don't think there's much difference in the quality in the first and second half.

“I don't think the second half is particularly good, to be fair. I just think that in those moments we actually scored two goals and in the first half we conceded those goals, defending terribly.

“Otherwise, we should have done better but it was not our game in general. It was the ball bouncing away sometimes, the last pass, but it was not our game in general [that cost us]. It was strong to pick up, get the draw and go nine in a row without a loss.”