FRUSTRATED manager Steve McClaren has urged the club's supporters to remain patient in an attempt to help Middlesbrough emerge from a disastrous run of form that is threatening to ruin their season.

Boro have taken just seven points from a possible 30 since the turn of the year and have plummeted from fifth in the Premiership to a worrying ninth after losing 3-1 to Southampton yesterday.

Defeats to Manchester United in the FA Cup and Sporting Lisbon in the UEFA Cup have also ensured that there will be no repeat of last season when silverware returned to Teesside for the first time in the club's history.

But McClaren, well aware of Boro's failure to win any of their seven league games on a Sunday that have followed Thursday European fixtures, insists his team can still finish strongly - providing everyone pulls together.

"Everyone has got used to winning; the expectations shot up this season after winning the Carling Cup," said McClaren. "The realism is, is that we need to stick together. The players, the staff and the fans are all included in that.

"It's important we all stick together. It's where we finish and not where we are at the moment. We are not in a good vein of form and the performance was disappointing, as was the result.

"We are very disappointed. Everyone here, the fans, the coaching staff and the players are very disappointed. As much as we were heroic on Thursday in Lisbon we couldn't raise to that standard again. It's understandable but when it happens it's not nice. We were poor and didn't deserve to win and there's no getting away from that."

McClaren will allow a large number of his players a week off during the international break while the coaching and medical staff work hard on trying to ensure Mark Viduka, Ugo Ehiogu, George Boateng, Ray Parlour and Michael Reiziger are fit for the trip to Crystal Palace on April 2.

And the Boro boss feels that his side, providing his star players can make comebacks, are more than capable of turning on the style for the final weeks of the campaign and push back into one of the UEFA Cup spots.

"The next two weeks are vital. The likes of Southgate, Zenden and Hasselbaink will get a rest. They will disappear until next Monday. We will send them away for a week," he said.

"We are only three quarters of the way in. There are reasons why we are where we are but everyone sees that. We have had a fantastic season in Europe. There's too much doom and gloom around the place that things are not happening. We can go unbeaten now for eight games and then where will we be? That's what we need."

Failure to draft new blood into the injury-ravaged squad during the January transfer window has clearly played its part too.

And McClaren said: "We ought to address that at the end of the season. When you are in Europe we have learned you need a bigger squad.

"We have had more injuries than expected this season. The squad hasn't had enough to cope with the demands of Europe.

"We only won one in 11 and that's something we will question at the end of the season."

Southampton's assistant boss Jim Smith admitted immediately after the match that there was a sense before the game that Boro would be unable to cope with playing two days in four days.

And the former Newcastle boss and Boro coach, after witnessing his side climb out of the bottom three, paid special tribute to his defence on a day that their strikeforce grabbed the headlines.

"It was a big win and we are now out of the bottom three. We were never going to stay up if we didn't get an away win," said Smith.

"Since the new signings came in during January the confidence has come through but we were also a little lucky that we played Boro after their game in Europe on Thursday.

"We thought beforehand that this was a massive, defining weekend for us and it has proved. They all produced and were magnificent. Rory Delap kept Stewart Downing very quiet, while the two centre-backs were tremendous."

But Smith also paid a glowing tribute to two-goal hero Peter Crouch. "Peter has played like that every week since we have been here," said Smith.

"He was magnificent and his two finishes were fantastic. His techinque on the first goal was terrific and the finish for the second was brilliant."

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