Blues are fourth from bottom of the Sky Bet Championship, three points above third-bottom Rotherham United, although the latter have three games in hand.

Before the game there was a minor protest from Birmingham fans driving a van around the city and outside St Andrew's, aimed at owners Trillion Trophy Asia and chief executive Xuandong Ren, rather than Karanka.

Asked if he will resign, Karanka said: "No chance. In my career I never gave up and here isn't going to be the first place.

"The answer is to keep working in the way I am and to keep trying to do the things I can control.

"The aim is just to try to organise the training sessions as well as I can, to try to show them to prepare for the games as well as I can and to motivate them as much as I can.

"I tell them they have to do things defensively and attacking-wise, but we finished the game with Sam Cosgrove and Lukas Jutkiewicz up front and we didn't deliver one ball into the box, so it's impossible to score goals.

"My personality and way of working is to keep going."

Karanka feels he is trying to motivate his players but admits the same problems keep resurfacing.

"The last meeting to motivate them was yesterday; I am trying," he added.

"This is the club where I have done I don't know how many different things. When everything is every single day – the same mistakes, the same problems, you need to try to change."

Palmer broke the deadlock in the 35th minute when he dispossessed Rekeem Harper and raced away before calmly sidefooting home.

Semenyo made it 2-0 when Etheridge's clearance hit him after Kristian Pedersen's poor backpass.

O'Dowda scored on 76, rolling the ball past Etheridge following Palmer's short pass.

Bristol City manager Nigel Pearson praised his side's ability to shut out the opposition after last week's 2-0 defeat at home to Queens Park Rangers.

"The most important thing is the clean sheet. That's really something I want us to work hard to preserve and to a man, they did it," he said.

"When you're asking forward-thinking players to do a (defensive) job and do it effectively, it was a very good response.

"We needed to rectify how we played collectively and I thought we did that, both in terms of defending exceptionally well as a side, but also utilising our pace and power.

"I can go through the side and reflect that everybody did the job they were there to do and I can't ask for a lot more than that."

Midfielder Palmer scored one and made another to cap a memorable week after becoming a father again.

"He was only with us yesterday and today," said Pearson.

"He's managed himself really well. The training he has done has been at home, and his wife and baby boy are doing well.

"It's always important to support players who need a bit of extra time, but I thought his performance was very good."