Bothroyd backtracks over criticism of Cardiff team-mates

Cardiff City striker Jay Bothroyd was forced into a hasty retraction after appearing to criticise his team-mates for their shock loss to Middlesbrough on Monday.

Dave Jones' side saw their automatic promotion hopes take a hit when they suffered a 3-0 drubbing at the hands of Tony Mowbray's side.

All three of the strikes from the mid-table team came in the opening 20 minutes and the former Arsenal forward took to Twitter to vent his frustrations.

"No matter who is upfront you can never win a game being 3-0 down after 20 mins. Defending needs to be better. We apologise to the fans!" he said.

Some of Bothroyd's followers quickly pointed that his team-mates in the back-four might not take kindly to the insinuation that they were at fault to the rout and Bothroyd was quick to quell any reaction.

"I'm not slagging any team-mates individually it's a team game and we defend collectively as a whole - it's needs to be better!!"