RICHIE Smallwood admits next season will be even harder in Middlesbrough’s quest for promotion, but the young midfielder still believes Tony Mowbray’s squad has what it takes to mount a challenge at the top of the Championship.

Boro are two games away from ending another disappointing campaign and they endured another frustrating afternoon on Saturday, when their place in next season’s Championship was mathematically confirmed with a defeat to Bolton Wanderers.

The Teessiders were extremely unlucky at the Reebok Stadium, though, with several inaccurate decisions from referee Darren Deadman going against them.

Bolton’s winner came from a harshly-awarded penalty after Chung-Yong Lee went down in the area, before Jonathan Woodgate was sent off for two yellow cards.

The result confirmed Boro will spend a fifth season outside the top flight and Smallwood knows their next attempt at gaining promotion will only be harder.

“The teams that come down and come up are always strong. There are a lot of teams in the mix and the top and bottom and there’s a lot of big clubs in there. Every year we’ve in this division it’s going to be harder and harder to get back up.

“I think we’ve got to keep working hard. We’ve obviously got the ability because we wouldn’t have been near the top at the halfway point.

Hopefully next season we don’t come off the pace.”

The 22-year-old continued in central midfield in the absence of the suspended Grant Leadbitter and further enhanced his reputation with an accomplished performance, although he couldn’t stop Boro going down to their 15th defeat on the road this term.

However, their latest awayday loss was largely down to a controversial penalty decision, rather than their own doing, after Lee went down easily in the area after Mowbray’s men had got themselves back into the game through Kieron Dyer’s header.

Smallwood said: “I just think we were unfortunate today. It’s frustrating because we did well to get back into the game and to lose it is sickening.

We came out in the second half and started well but they scored a lucky goal and it deflated us a bit. We did well to get back into the game and then the penalty decision came. Even when we were down to ten men we were trying to get a goal back and were solid. They haven’t conceded a goal at home for seven games and it was always going to be hard.”