Source: SKY_Sports
Southgate urges Boro bravery
Middlesbrough manager Gareth Southgate feels his side have "nothing to lose" as they aim to prove their doubters wrong and beat the drop.
Many have already written off Boro's survival hopes after winning just one of their last 18 league games to slide to second-bottom, four points adrift of safety with eight games left.
And Southgate is hoping that will work in his side's favour as they travel to Bolton on Saturday.
"I understand that people will think we are gone, and in some ways that probably helps us because we feel that we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by having a good go in every one of our remaining games," he said.
"We feel that we can give ourselves a great chance of staying up if we can win our next match at Bolton.
"If we are going to do that we have to be brave and be bold. We have to go
there and play the kind of football which can get us out of trouble."
Goal-scoring has been Boro's biggest problem as their tally of 21 is five fewer than any other Premier League team.
Record signing Afonso Alves has scored just four goals in 20 league starts this season and Southgate has defended the Brazilian striker, who could be set for a recall against Bolton.
"We know that we have to score goals if we want to stay in this league," said Southgate.
"We have created lots of chances this season but our problem has been putting them away.
"We know that we have goal-scorers in our squad and we will have to make sure that we utilise them fully in the last eight games.
Lack of confidence"Afonso has suffered from a lack of confidence during the season when the ball hasn't been going in for him, but we know what he can do and hopefully he can be an important player for us in the run-in," added the Boro boss.
"In fact, we need all our forwards to start producing. We will have to make sure that we adopt an attacking approach in all of our games and that we get the ball into the box and cause problems for the opposition.
"We won't be going gung-ho, because we know that we have to defend well at the same time. But we have quality defenders who can get us clean sheets and they have to do that. Then we must take our chances at the other end of the field.
"As far as we are concerned, there is still a lot to play for. Nobody has given up here. We believe that we are still in there with a fighting chance and it's up to us."
