I WOULD not have dared predict at the start of the season that Bolton Wanderers would go into Christmas seventh in the Premier League.

But nothing should surprise me where Owen Coyle is concerned.

I said right from the start that he was an inspired appointment; he was always a winner as a player and he’s a winner as a manager.

But even he has excelled himself with the way he has transformed the club’s fortunes in the space of less than a year.

Just look at the squad and you can see that it’s more or less the same group of players that he inherited, but the way they are playing is completely different to the way they were playing before he cam to the Reebok.

The secret? He has got the players working hard, playing with a determination, a belief in themselves and a togetherness. You can see week in and week out that there is a confidence among the players as individuals and as a unit.

What I can say for sure, though, is that Owen will not be getting carried away and he certainly won’t be letting the confidence turn into complacency.

In fact I’d be surprised if he wasn’t counting the points that have been dropped – the defeats that should have been draws and the draws that should have been wins.

When I was a kid at Liverpool we were brought up on the teachings of Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley who always used to say that no prizes were given out in December or January.

I’m sure Owen will be happy to be in this position and not struggling at the wrong end of the division, but he will be stressing to everyone involved that the task now is to use the successes of the first half of the season as a yardstick, to maintain the good habits, keep up the hard work and kick on in the weeks and months ahead.

IT is no consolation, I know, but Wanderers were denied at least a point at Sunderland by the save of the season.

If I live to be a hundred I’ll never know how Craig Gordon managed to keep out Zat Knight’s close-range shot.

Zat couldn’t have hit it any better and must have thought he had equalised until Gordon stuck out his hand and knocked the ball over the bar.

I’m not sure how much he knew about it but it was the turning point of the game. If we’d equalised at that point I reckon we could have gone on and won it.

Even then there were still three good chances to have taken at least a point, maybe all three.

Ivan Klasnic could have had a hat-trick.

You could see by Owen Coyle’s reaction when he put that third chance wide that it was a great opportunity missed but that’s just the reaction of a man who is a born winner.

I thought Klas just turned his body too quickly but there’s no way you can attach any blame to him. Just bear in mind how many times he has earned us points in the past.

He’s a natural goalscorer and on another day he could have been the hero. Just because it didn’t happen for him on Saturday is no reason to slag him off.

FULL marks to the Wanderers fans who braved the elements and made the journey up to Sunderland.

I know the situation up there was okay, but when supporters in this neck of the woods opened the curtains on Saturday morning and saw the Arctic conditions, they must have had serious doubts about making the trip. And you wouldn’t have blamed them if they had stayed at home.

Even so, a couple of hundred diehards who would follow their team to the ends of the earth dug themselves out of the snow and headed for the North East, determined to make their presence felt at the Stadium of Light.

It really was above and beyond the call of duty.

Unfortunately, they didn’t get the result they were looking for but I know their efforts were greatly appreciated by Owen Coyle and the players.

I’VE been getting stick from people for not getting into the festive spirit but I’ve always been a bit of a humbug.

That’s because, in 17 years as a professional footballer, I never really got a chance to celebrate Christmas.

I remember one year when I was at Bolton that Bruce Rioch had us in for training on Christmas morning, gave us a break to let us go home to our families for lunch then had us report back at Burnden Park at five o’clock before heading up for a week in the Lake District.

It was tough on our familes, of course, but that is the nature of the job. We moaned, but Bruce just told us that we had plenty of free time to celebrate our Christmas when we had our six-week break in the summer.

Even though I’m a bit of a humbug, I’d like to wish each and every one of you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Forgive me if I don’t sound too excited about the holiday season, but Christmas Day for me will be all about going to bed early and looking forward to the Boxing Day game against West Brom.

Old habits die hard.