Middlesbrough head coach Kim Hellberg hailed his side’s 2-2 draw with the Blues at Portman Road as “one of the best games from the Championship”

The Teessiders were denied a first win in seven by Jack Clarke’s sixth penalty of the season three minutes from the end of a match which had swung one way and then the other.

“What a game, I think it was!” Hellberg said. “Back and forth, it was an unbelievable game of football over 98 minutes, back and forth, both teams trying to press, both teams trying to play out.

“It was one of the best games from the Championship and that’s what you like about football, back and forth, being aggressive, trying to solve it, brave teams. It was a real game of football.

“Of course, the emotions are tough but I think we had more chances than them over 90 minutes and it’s, of course, disappointing that we didn’t win.

“But I think the most impressive thing for us was that with so many players unavailable, key players for us, we come here, even if in the first half they were a little bit better than us, I think, we were better in the second half against a very good team.

“We looked like ourselves all the time, we were trying to press, we were trying to solve it and I’m very impressed by that, also during a tough time in terms of the results having not gone our way. A lot of those emotions.”

Regarding the late penalty when Adilson Malanda hauled back George Hirst as an Anis Mehmeti cross came over from the right, Hellberg said: “It’s a tough one to get against you, of course. To be fair Malanda pulls him a little bit, he put his hands there, which means you always take the risk, if we’re going to look at our own perspective.

“As everyone says, he can never reach the ball. Those things happen all the time, he cannot reach the ball, he’s not first on the ball. He makes it in a good way clear that Malanda has touched him and the referee makes a decision.

“If you look at it our way, you should not give him the opportunity to give them the pen. If you look at many others, I think it was a tough one to get, though.”

Hellberg approached referee Jarred Gillett on the pitch at the end but says they had a positive exchange.

“I talked to the referee after the game in a very good way,” the Swede insisted. “We had a very good discussion after the game.

“I like that, he wanted to talk to me and we had a very good discussion. It was emotions, it was more emotions. I love football and I try to win. Emotions!”

Prior to the match, Hellberg had said that Boro had to win to maintain their automatic promotion hopes.

Asked whether he still believes that to be the case ahead of back-to-back home games against Sheffield Wednesday and Watford, he reflected: “I think we need to look to the two next games to try and win them in every aspect of whatever it is to get into, the chance to maybe to still play for the automatics in the last game or to get momentum.

“It’s more for me now to try to get to those two home games and be as good as possible and bring a lot of energy to them because you have one week then to prepare for the last game [at Wrexham] and then you know what you need from it.

“It is tough because in the 87th minute we’re in a winning position, we’re in it together with everyone else.

“There can still be twists and turns a lot of things can come into it, so we’re not out of it, it’s more about seeing what happens after those two games. I think that’s the most important thing and then we’ll see. You won’t have to wait so long until the Watford game, and then we know. We’ll see and we’ll try and build the momentum.”

Photo: TWTD