Marvin Emnes had given Boro a half-time lead before on-loan forward Josh King equalised and Matty Fryatt popped up with the winner two minutes from the end.

The result ended a run of five straight defeats for the Tigers and Barmby was pleased with a much-improved second-half display.

"You could see Josh King getting stronger in the second half," Barmby said.

"We need people to make things happen and he certainly did that. He nearly created a third goal too.

Punished

"I thought in the first 20 minutes we were the better side and we were unlucky not to score.

"We were on top, but the opposition hit us on the break. We got punished trying to play offside.

"Vito [Mannone] made a great save [from Emnes] when it was 1-0 and it was the turning point of the game. He's been doing that for us all season.

"But then we got the players in at half-time and told them that we needed to be tighter as a team as our shape wasn't right.

"We showed a lot of bravery on the ball in the second half, which was important. We don't want anyone to be shying away from the ball, and we didn't."

Hull have now moved to within two points of Boro, who have slipped out of the play-off places on the back of a run of eight games without a win, but Barmby is playing down his team's chances of gatecrashing the top six.

"No one has been saying we'll do anything all season, so we'll just try to keep playing as we did today and see what happens," he said.

Disappointed

Frustrated Middlesbrough boss Mowbray admitted his side had missed an opportunity to end their dismal run of form.

"We were very disappointed to only be 1-0 up at half-time as we had lots of opportunities to score and didn't take them," he said.

"We told them at half-time about concentrating, but Hull didn't have to work hard for their first goal, and it gave their supporters a lift.

"Then they got the second goal and it gave us a result that we could not have foreseen at half-time.

"There are now four games left and I think we probably need to win three of them.

"We've been drawing games that we should have been winning.

"The way the league table is suggests that other teams have been on similar runs. Perhaps it has been partly due to inconsistency of selection, but I don't want to make excuses as lots of teams have injuries.

"The performance level of the team is still pretty good and we know we can win football matches, but we have to score goals. We have to go and win games and we can't keep giving teams goals."