We finally lost our unbeaten tag in pre-season in our tenth friendly as AEK Athens beat us 2-1 in the Nikos Goumas Stadium on Sunday night.

After eight wins and a draw in nine friendlies, two goals from set-pieces proved our downfall against the Greek outfit.

We actually started brightly and both Sergei Rebrov and Steffen Iversen went close to opening the scoring in the early exchanges before Gus Poyet did just that with 10 minutes on the clock.

In a carbon-copy of his goal against Fiorentina on Wednesday, midfielder Poyet lost his marker to flick home Rebrov's corner.

But our joy was short-lived this time around. AEK levelled with a well-executed free-kick from the impressive Vassilis Tstartas after 20 minutes and 10 minutes later, scored what turned out to be the winner via Rodrigo Ramos' looping header from a corner.

Christian Ziege cracked the crossbar with a free-kick but the second half was a somewhat scrappy affair with few chances at either end as the home side held on to become the first side claim our scalp this summer.

Line-up: Sullivan, Taricco, Doherty (Perry, 45), Bunjevcevic, King (Thelwell, 81), Ziege, Clemence, Freund, Poyet (Davies, 75), Iversen (Ferdinand, 45), Rebrov.