MARLON King admitted to mixed emotions after his dramatic equaliser for Blues at Peterborough United.

King’s penalty in the third minute of stoppage time salvaged a point and halted a succession of dismal away results.

And although it meant Blues continued to cut the gap to the Championship’s play-off zone, it could have been so much better at London Road.

Blues went behind after just 32 seconds and fluffed three golden opportunities to score before the spot-kick success.

“We showed our character once again, and there are still plenty of games left this season,” said King, who notched his ninth goal of the campaign.

“The draw kept our recent run going. Our away form hasn’t been the best and hopefully this is the start of a new year where we can start picking up more points on our travels.

“It was nice not to lose, a point was better than none.

“The boys were all disappointed with the chances we didn’t take. But last year we probably would have lost this kind of game.

“You look at the Reading game and the Palace game, where we dominated but conceded bad goals, for example.

“We’ve got to look to the positives instead of the negatives.

“Seeing the other results, this league is so open and you have a chance to shoot up four or five places very quickly.

“We’ve got to concentrate on ourselves and move on to the next game.”

Blues appeared to be heading for a sixth defeat in seven matches on the road until King proved a cool customer under intense pressure from the spot.

With four minutes left of normal time, Chris Hughton went to 3-5-2 to try to engineer a change in fortune.

And King said that, and the earlier additions of substitutes Nathan Redmond and Chris Wood, helped turn the screw on Posh.

“We kept on going, the gaffer made changes, and the boys who came on made an impact at the end there.