Megson: Boro not dead and buried

03 April 2009 14:24
Southgate's men lie four points adrift of safety with only eight games remaining ahead of their trip to the Reebok Stadium on Saturday. Many pundits believe the Teessiders can start planning for life in the Championship but Megson does not subscribe to that theory. The Trotters boss said: "Middlesbrough have not gone at all - nowhere near gone - and if they beat us they are right back in it. "They have got some real top quality players up there. "People make an assumption that this will happen and that will happen. It doesn't work out like that. "Middlesbrough beat Liverpool recently and I don't think many people expected that. It's far from over." Middlesbrough have won only one of their last 18 league games - a 2-0 victory over Liverpool on February 28 - and last collected all three points on their travels at Aston Villa on November 9. Yet despite their perilous position, Megson is refusing to write off Boro as certainties for the drop. Megson has pointed to his own side's flirtation with relegation last season when they looked doomed at the start of April. Almost a year ago to the day, Bolton were thumped 4-0 at Villa and were left with a dismal tally of 26 points with just five games remaining. To Megson's credit he engineered a remarkable late rally which harvested three wins and two draws from the five games to safeguard the Trotters' top-flight status. Megson recalled: "Ourselves and Fulham were deemed to be relegated at this time last year. "People looked at us with five games and it was openly out there that Bolton had gone. "Those people were wrong. We took 11 points from the last 15 and we hadn't done anything like that in previous games last season. "The consensus of opinion was that Derby, Fulham and ourselves would get relegated, but two of us got out of it, so there is still everything to play for with every club down there at the moment." There has been undeniable progress at Bolton since their successful fight with relegation last season, yet the fear of sliding into the Championship still haunts Megson. The Trotters are five points above third-bottom Newcastle, but Megson said: "The relegation issue is between nine clubs at the moment, from West Brom up to ourselves, and we want to try and get out of that relegation area as soon as we can. "At the moment I don't think there's a single club in the entire Premier League who has not got something to play for with eight games to go. "We cannot set a points target because we don't know what the points target is, but we're certainly better off now than where we were at this stage last season." Bolton 11/10, Draw 9/4, Middlesboro 13/5  

Source: Team_Talk