IT still really worries me that people are acting blasé about our fight against relegation, and not taking into account what the consequences of dropping into the Championship could be for this football club.

We won our first battle on Saturday. It was a close run affair and it wasn’t pretty. But, as the saying goes, the war is far from over and I’m looking at those games against Blackburn and Wolves in a couple of weeks as the real big ones. Win at all costs.

On paper our run-in looks fine, but we’ve still got to earn the right to stay in the Premier League – and it is absolutely vital that the message sinks through to the fans, the players and the staff in the next couple of months.

It concerns me when I hear fans talk about the “good old days,” when we were fighting our way back up the Football League, because everything we did back then was to get the club to where it is now.

People hark back to the football, the formations or the goals we scored at Burnden Park, or even the great days under Big Sam, but it was a completely different world then. The game has changed completely.

Nowadays points are so hard to come by and every single decision you make as a manager is magnified so many times. It’s quite unbelievable.

Of course, some turn out wrong but then, that’s life. When you make the right decisions, people don’t tend to mention them.

Owen has come in for some stick in recent weeks over formations and you can accept that everyone will have their opinion. But whether it’s 4-4-2, or 4-5-1, it all boils down to getting the job done because everyone is judged on results. If he keeps the club up, with everything else he’s trying to do in the background, then that is a qualified success.

If we were relegated at the end of this season, then how long do you think it would be before we got promoted again?

We wouldn’t be able to spend our way back into the Premier League, like West Ham, and every single level of the club would take a hit – the playing staff, the coaching staff, travel, pretty much everything behind the scenes.

Look at the long list of clubs who have never made it back – Nottingham Forest, Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield United – and you worry what the future might hold.

A lot of hard work went into getting – and keeping – Bolton Wanderers in the Premier League and when you consider what the alternatives are, I just hope everyone is up for this fight.

EVERY dressing room up and down the land has a collection of players who think they should be in the team.

A footballer works all week in training so he can play on a Saturday, and even when things are going well, there is always something at the back of his mind that stops him enjoying it too much. That’s just the way footballers are made.

As a manager, you want that competitiveness in your squad and anyone who you feel is happy just sitting on the bench and collecting a wage shouldn’t be at the club. You want them to be scrapping for their place.

Unfortunately for Saturday’s match-winner Ivan Klasnic and a couple of the lads who were on the bench from the start against QPR, it’s results and not morale that takes precedence right now. You can talk all day about the goals Ivan scores but the bottom line is this – he just doesn’t get through the workload that David Ngog does up front, because it is phenomenal.

Owen has happened upon a system that works, looks relatively solid, and enables us to grind out points.

But you couldn’t see Ivan doing the same job and that’s not a poor reflection on him, it’s just that the team’s shape doesn’t suit him.

I’ve noticed there have been a few murmurs of disquiet and a couple of gestures creeping in with the lads who are not getting in the team over the last few weeks.

Owen will take that, though. Right now, all anyone should care about is that this club stays in the Premier League.

LOST in all the fuss about Clint Hill’s “goal that never was” at the Reebok last weekend was the fact that Adam Bogdan made a save that might well keep us in the Premier League.

Of course the ball was over the line, and of course it was a goal, but if Bogdan had given it up, and let it drift into the net, we wouldn’t be discussing it at all.

To get such a good wrist to the ball and push it out was unbelievable. Of course, it has all been glossed over because of the controversy but at this stage of the week, I’ll bet every man and dog has had their say, and there’s not much more for me to add.

If that goal had been given, you would have fancied QPR from there. With Bobby Zamora and Djibril Cisse’s pace, they could have hit us on the break because Owen would have had to change his system a lot earlier than he did. It would have been a completely different contest.

RYO Miyaichi’s biggest problem at Bolton is that every time he’s had a good game, people bring up Jack Wilshere.

There was huge pressure on the wide man, pictured, coming to the Reebok because of what his fellow Arsenal team-mate Wilshere had achieved here.

The hype was built up and people expected exactly the same, but I think we’re seeing now that they both perform very different roles – albeit equally well at the moment.

Miyaichi’s through ball for Ivan Klasnic at the weekend was fantastic. The weight on it was perfect.

He is growing in confidence week by week but I think we still need to remember how inexperienced he is and not pin too much on him right now.