Wigan Athletic manager Steve Bruce is ruing the January transfers of striker Emile Heskey and attacking midfielder Wilson Palacios.

The Latics have struggled for goals since the duo left and Bruce puts it down to having no Heskey or Palacios.

"With Heskey and Palacios going, and Valencia injured, we've lost a little bit of the cutting edge we had," Bruce said.

"We've always been a difficult team to beat, but at the moment we're missing creativity in the final third of the pitch. But we'll keep working on that aspect of our play and hopefully we can get things right going forward.

"It was horrible having to change things round in mid-season, but for obvious reasons we had to do that. At Boro we looked a bit more threatening when Rodallega came on, while Sibierski gave us composure.

"I thought we had two or three good chances towards the end, but unfortunately we didn't take them. In the end I thought it was a decent result, especially when you consider all the changes we've had to make recently.

"As the second half went on, there was only one side that was going to win it and that was us."