BILLY Davies today warned Nottingham Forest's young players are still learning what it takes to flourish in Championship football, but he insisted: "They can be proud of their unbeaten record."

The Scot was critical of the Reds' first half performance at Middlesbrough, accusing his players of being 'complacent and big headed' at the Riverside Stadium.

Forest were vastly improved as they fought back to claim a 1-1 draw after the break, in a match they could easily have won.

And Davies admitted: "They are still young players, they do not know how to handle certain things.

"You have to have a word with them sometimes, because this is still an education for some of these players.

"This team is still raw, it will still make errors.

"We have to work on them on the training ground and in matches to make sure that they continue to learn; that they do continue to improve.

"In the first half, we became complacent and a little big headed, but it is a learning curve for these young players."

Forest are now unbeaten in nine away games and in their last nine matches overall.

"We are obviously very proud of our away record continuing but, over the first 45 minutes, we were far too slow, we were far too complacent and we didn't play angrily enough. I felt that, although we did not have any pressure on our goal, we did not play the Forest way, with or without the ball," said Davies.

"That was the angriest I have been at half time, without a doubt. We looked like we had taken our foot off the gas.

"We were Boro's best player at times, quite seriously – we gave them the ball so often.

"I said a few choice words at half time, in fact I said more than a few choice words. But there is no doubt that they played much more like themselves after the break, they played with more pace and more tempo.

"We probably deserved to take three points. There was only one team in it after the break, we had a lot more possession and probably more clear cut chances.

"But we are not good enough at this club to be able to drop even a single percent in our performance levels.

"I said that to the players at half time and at the end, I warned them that they couldn't do that."