IT was an absolute joy to be among the Bolton fans at Old Trafford on Saturday where I’m pleased to say that I saw encouraging signs that they are finally warming to Gary Megson.

It’s fair to say that many supporters have not exactly taken Gary to their hearts over the last two years but I sense that is changing.

The boys have been playing some good stuff — as they showed on Saturday when they really had United rattled in that last 25 minutes or so and when I genuinely thought they deserved something for their efforts.

And I think a lot of people are waking up to the fact that they can be a force in the Premier League.

The fans who went to Old Trafford seemed to think so, judging by the noise they made. Considering United had more than 70,000 behind them, it was only the Bolton fans you could hear. It’s a strange ground in that sense. Maybe the expectations of the United supporters are too high, I’m not sure, but I’ve got to say our fans were different class.

I was so disappointed for their sakes, for the players’ sakes and for Gary Megson’s sake that we didn’t get at least the one point we deserved.

The manager has always been terrific whenever I have needed him for anything on behalf of the supporters — even when it’s been at short notice. And on the football side, now that he has got things on an even keel, he’s put together a team that really gets at the opposition.

When I was an apprentice at Liverpool teams used to come to Anfield to sit back and defend — and usually got well beaten. But when teams came and got at them, they often went away with something.

And although the lads gave themselves a mountain to climb conceding those two goals in the first half-hour or so and they needed Jussi Jaaskelainen, pictured, to make some magnificent saves, they took the game to United and I can’t recall a team creating quite so many scoring chances against the champions. I know Kevin Davies was bitterly disappointed he didn’t put that early header away and Gary Cahill would definitely have equalised at the death if he’d put his header either side of Edwin van der Sar.

But I can’t stress enough how good a keeper we’ve got in Jussi and it was thanks to him that we actually went on to shock United.

And they were shocked, believe me.

If the same Bolton turns up against Everton on Sunday, I can only see there being one result — a home win.

Before that, I’ll be at ringside at the Arena on Friday night to watch Jamie Moore in action.

Jamie’s a great fighter, a great bloke and — as I found out when we worked together on the fund-raiser for injured fireman Steve Morris — a great charity worker.

I was on the pitch with Jamie after he won his European title and I promised then that I’d be there to see his next fight and I’d love to see any of the Bolton fans who are at a loose end on Friday night going along to give him their backing.

I wasn’t able to get to see the Youth team in action on Saturday because I was putting the final touches to my UEFA B coaching licence. But I do know that they drew 1-1 at Stoke, so congratulations to Peter Farrell and the boys for extending that unbeaten run to seven games.