Warnock pleased to get the respect from 'good humoured' Hatters fans but felt Boro were on the wrong end of two refereeing decisions

Middlesbrough manager Neil Warnock hailed the 'good humoured' Luton supporters for their reaction to his milestone match at Kenilworth Road last night, although felt his side should have been walking away with the three points.

After going down to a 3-1 defeat, and seeing assistant Kevin Blackwell, a former Town boss himself jeered off, the home supporters began by taunting Warnock has he headed for the tunnel.

It then quickly turned to rousing applause though, with the 72-year-old, who was taking his 1,602nd English Football League game, a new record, reciprocating the gesture, as speaking afterwards, Warnock said: “It (Kenilworth Road) is a good football ground, places like QPR, this, I love the atmosphere like that.

“I’ve come away, we've lost the game, three simple goals we've given away and yet it's a game I think we should have won so it's disappointing for me on two fronts.

"I think they (Luton fans) respect me.

"They've always given me stick here, most places do, and I always give them stick back if I can, so I don’t mind that all.

"There's not enough good humoured like that around the place and you saw the reception I got, probably because we lost though.

"We haven’t got that nastiness that they’ve got, that little bit of what you need in the Championship. We’re quite a nice team if I’m honest.

“Play decent football, should have won the game tonight but when you’ve got to be physical and you’ve got to defend and you’ve got to have that mentality, we haven’t got enough of that."

After seeing the visitors lead through Josh Coburn on 16 minutes, Warnock felt his side should have had a penalty when Isaiah Jones went over the challenge of Dan Potts in the area.

Replays showed the Boro attacker dangle his legs into the Town full back's to win the contact, with referee Tim Robinson rightly rejecting the appeals.

After the break and with Luton now 3-1 in front through quickfire goals from Sonny Bradley, Elijah Adebayo and Harry Cornick, Jones once again caused problems to the home defence, with Fred Onyedinma bringing him down for what looked like a spotkick, only for Robinson to rule the incident happened outside the box.

A frustrated Warnock added: "I think the linesman overruled the referee on Isaiah Jones.

“Then in the second half, I think it’s a penalty.

"He’s outside the box and he gives it which is an easy cop out really but he gives Isaiah advantage.

"The advantage takes you into the box and then he’s fouled, so it’s a penalty.

"But we didn’t seem to get any rub of the green tonight.

“The linesman over the far side who didn’t give the Isaiah Jones penalty, I don’t think he’s ever given us anything when I’ve seen him.

"I’ll not miss him when I retire.”