5 YEARS AGO GARY

Megson and his players hailed the supporters for being their 12th man as they hauled themselves out of the Premier league drop zone with an incredible 1-0 win at Middlesbrough.

Many of the 2,000 contingent took advantage of the club’s free travel offer that saw a convoy of 27 coaches make the journey to the Riverside Stadium.

As a result, the players were urging their bosses to offer the same incentive for the upcoming trip to Spurs – the first of three remaining games that would decide their Premier League fate.

“That’s what we’ll be putting to them to see what they think,” said star defender Gary Cahill as he praised the fans who drowned out Boro’s home support from first whistle to last with chants of “We are staying up!”.

“Hopefully, they can do that for the Tottenham game,” said Cahill. “In all seriousness, I thought they helped a lot.

“They were brilliant and if they can get that going again for the Tottenham game it will certainly help the lads out there.”

Gavin McCann’s goal on the hour – scored at close range after Boro keeper Ross Turnbull had failed to hold Cahill’s header – was enough to earn Wanderers back-to-back wins for the first time in more than a year and, coupled with Reading’s defeat at Arsenal and Birmingham’s 5-1 hammering at Aston Villa, hoisted them two places clear of the bottom three.

Megson, pictured, counselled caution though, warning that the pendulum could swing back just as dramatically.

But the performance, after a wretched start, showed immense character just when it was needed, and the manager and players were quick to acknowledge the part the huge travelling support had played – as they had after the crucial victory over West Ham at the Reebok the previous weekend.

“They got behind us from the word go,” said defender Jlloyd Samuel. “Hopefully, we can try and get as many fans again following us down to Tottenham – even if it means putting a few coaches on for them.”

Megson, who came under fierce fire from supporters during and after the previous away game – a 4-0 beating at Aston Villa – could not have asked for much more from either his players or their fans on Teesside.

“The support was brilliant,” the manager said. “I’ve never had a problem with the supporters from my point of view, but today they’ve outsung however many Middlesbrough fans were here.

“They’ve really backed their team, even when we started poorly.

“We were awful for quite a while, certainly for the first 20 minutes, but they played their part in pulling us through that and certainly in driving us on to win.”

25 YEARS AGO

BOLTON Wanderers chairman Barry Chaytow apologised to the club’s supporters after a scoreless draw at home to promotion rivals Scunthorpe put a huge dent in their hopes of an instant return to Division Three.

The man at the helm, committed to steering Wanderers back to the third tier, says he “felt sorry” for the fans who watched Phil Neal and his team forced to settle for a point four days after losing at Cardiff – another of their rivals in the promotion race.

Neal came out of retirement to play in an injury-ravaged back four and helped shore things up in defence. But the attackers drew a blank, despite playing against a side reduced to 10 men for all but a quarter of the game after the Iron’s Dave Shearer was sent off for scything down Gary Henshaw.

The result left Wanderers with a record of just two wins in eight games and saw them drop from fourth to fifth in the table – overtaken by Torquay, who trounced Newport.

The fear was that they would have to settle for the play-offs for the second year running.

And even that prospect, a lifeline though it might have been, was hardly relished by Bolton fans who had seen their team beaten by Aldershot and relegated at the same stage the previous season.

Chaytow immediately expressed his concern for the feelings of the anxious supporters.

“I’m really sorry for the fans,” he said. “It was a disappointing performance, especially since they were down to 10 men for such a long time.

“The fans are saying things to me and I understand their feelings.

“We’ve just got to hope we still get promoted, but I think our best chance now is in the play-offs”.

But Neal’s chief coach, Mick Brown, took a much more optimistic stance and praised the 37-year-old manager for his performance and character in stepping up to the plate after skipper and centre-half Dave Sutton and experienced full-back Dean Crombie failed fitness tests.

“We are still very hopeful,” Brown said. “One result can change it round again and it’s up to us to make the best of it on Saturday at home to Newport. We should be able to make up ground.

“The thing that’s really disappointing is that we’ve had two very hard games and for what we’ve put in we haven’t got much out of them.”

On Neal’s return to football, four months after he announced his retirement after previously being pressed into emergency service, Brown added: “I think he did smashing. It’s not easy to come back in a game like this. He could have chosen to throw a youngster in but that might have destroyed the kid. That’s the sort of character he is.”

50 YEARS AGO

THE prospect of relegation from Division One suddenly appeared on the horizon for Bill Ridding’s Wanderers.

They had not enjoyed the best of seasons, by any stretch of the imagination, but there had been no serious concerns that they would lose their place at football’s top table.

But all that changed after a shock 1-0 home defeat at the hands of a Leyton Orient side that was bottom of the table and already resigned to the drop.

They were still ahead of Manchester United, Manchester City, Ipswich and Birmingham, but with 28 points from 33 games, they were still at least eight points short of the perceived safety target.

More worrying still was the latest in a succession of poor performances.

Orient had won just one away game that season until they arrived at Burnden Park.

But what was meant to be a relatively comfortable test for Wanderers turned into a nightmare.

Despite hectic attacking for the greater part of the second half, Wanderers just could not pull back the 49th-minute goal by David Dunmore that stunned the crowd of 16,600.

That was tough on goalkeeper Alex Smith, who was standing in for the injured Eddie Hopkinson and was wrong-footed when Dunmore’s shot took a deflection.

Smith had otherwise done well, other than losing one ball in the goalmouth just before half time – a mistake he got away with.

The blame for the defeat lay at the feet of the forwards who either missed chances or found their best attempts countered by England’s former amateur goalkeeper Mike Pinner. Supremely confident from first whistle to last, Pinner kept out a superb hook shot from Billy Russell in the final 15 minutes.

Francis Lee, Wyn Davies and Brian Birch all drew blanks and when Pinner did slip up he was helped by a goal-line clearance by his defender Stan Charlton.