OWEN Coyle is confident he can finish the most challenging season of his managerial career still in charge of a Premier League club.

Wanderers have been in and around the relegation zone all season and enter the final three weeks of the campaign desperate for points to avoid dropping back into the second tier after 11 seasons of top-flight football.

For Coyle it has been a difficult time, made worse by a series of setbacks that have stretched his resources and tested his resolve.

Nevertheless, despite a succession of what he describes as “uncontrollables” – the latest of which has left him down to the bare bones in midfield ahead of tonight’s must-win game at Aston Villa – he remains resolute in his belief that he has a team capable of winning enough points in their final five games to stay up.

“This is not a team that is out of sorts and out of form,” he said, underlining an unshakeable belief in the ability of whatever team he sends out at Villa Park.

“It’s a team that has taken 10 points from the last six games and that can take a similar amount of points from the last five games.

“And that’s what we’ve got to do.”

Nine of those 10 points came in a three-match winning run before Easter that appeared to have given Wanderers a momentum to pull clear of the scramble for survival.

But successive defeats at home to Fulham and at Newcastle saw them drop back into the bottom three and just a point from Saturday’s home game against Swansea allied to QPR’s defeat of Tottenham later in the day, has left them four points short of the current safety mark.

But they have two games in hand on their main rivals in the survival stakes – the first of which is at Villa tonight and the second at home to Spurs on May 2.

And Coyle is determined to turn that to his advantage.

“We are still in control of our destiny,” he insisted.

“We have to utilise the games in hand and that starts at Aston Villa.

“If we get a positive result there, then the picture changes very quickly again.”

There is no getting away from the fact, however, that events have conspired against Wanderers throughout the 2011-12 campaign – starting with injuries in pre-season that robbed Coyle of the services of Chung-Yong Lee and Tyrone Mears. The fixture list didn’t help matters, pitching them against Manchester City, Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea in their first seven games – the consequence being that they were left playing catch-up.

Stuart Holden’s anticipated return to the Premier League suffered a setback and the events surrounding Fabrice Muamba collapse and subsequent fight for life tested the entire club’s resolve.

Now, with Darren Pratley sidelined with a virus and Mark Davies, Coyle has selection problems he can ill afford at such a critical stage of the season – problems that might force him to throw promising but so far untried academy graduate Josh Vela into the fray.

Joking in the face of adversity yesterday, he considered his midfield options and said: “Nigel Reo-Coker is fully fit . . . ”

That said, he knows the situation is serious. He and his Reebok bosses have drawn up plans that will put the club on a more stable footing in the future, but retaining their Premier League status is paramount and has presented the Scot with the biggest test of his career.

Asked if this was his most challenging season in football, he answered without hesitation: “Absolutely. There is no doubt about that.

“We’re in the best league in the world and when huge uncontrollables go against you, of course it makes it more difficult.

“We accept the highs are very high but, equally, when it’s difficult you have to understand what’s involved in a game and how you see your way through it.

“The good thing about us is that you always find us the same way. When we’ve been doing well we are still the same balanced people and we’ll be the same when it gets difficult because we know how hard we are working. We know what we are trying to put in place for the future of the club – but we accept as well we need to stay in the best league in the world and to do that we need to win points at the business end of the season.

“I’ve been very fortunate in my management. I’ve had relative success whatever club I’ve been at . . . I took over Bolton Wanderers second bottom of the league and addressed that; we had a terrific transition last year with the football we played and the personnel we brought in.

“We understand the reason we are here but we don’t ever get too down about it. Football changes very quickly and opportunities change very quickly.

“A few weeks ago Blackburn were six points clear . . . then everybody started winning all around them. We did that ourselves and we can do it again.

We accept the other teams have points in the bag, but we can change that very quickly.”