CHRIS Hughton has admitted Blues have to start making life easier for themselves by becoming more ruthless.

And the Blues manager stated that their unsatisfactory away record only added to the pressure at St Andrew’s.

Blues fell to their seventh Championship away defeat at Crystal Palace and their fourth straight in all competitions on the road.

In that recent spell, all the games have been extremely tight – SC Braga, Cardiff City, Hull City, the Eagles on Monday.

It was a similar story at Reading.

But Blues have been unable to apply finishing touches to generally good approach play, as was the case at Selhurst Park.

“It’s tough and frustrating, you don’t like losing, especially when you believe you should have got something from a game,” said Hughton.

“When it’s a tight affair, with not that many chances, it’s about who has that little bit more.

“Certainly, we couldn’t have got many more balls into the box. Probably we got more into the box than we have done away from home for a while.

“But if you’re getting that type of level of cross in and getting into the box that often, and into good positions, you’ve got to be making life easier for yourselves and the only way to do that is, of course, to score.

“In that spell of away games we’ve had, we’ve been in with a chance of getting something out of them all.

“But we haven’t and it’s those fine margins, those small margins. What it does is put more pressure on our home games and, of course, that’s not what you want.”

Blues are unbeaten at St Andrew’s – six wins, three draws – and have the best defensive home record in the league.

West Ham United are the visitors on Boxing Day (5.30pm), when Blues will be without the suspended Curtis Davies after he collected a fifth booking of the campaign at Selhurst Park.