A DELIGHTED Steve McClaren last night hailed summer buy Aiyegbeni Yakubu as 'awesome' after the Nigerian turned on the style to lead a Middlesbrough revival.

The £7.5m buy from Portsmouth never stopped running at the Fulham defence, wreaking havoc as Boro bounced back from the defeat at Everton with a fantastic win.

And Yakubu scored his seventh Premiership goal for the club in just nine appearances to claw Boro level for a second time in the fixture - albeit in unusual circumstances.

Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink's miscued shot actually hit the shin of his strike-partner and rolled into the Fulham net - as the visiting players surrounded the linesman claiming he was in an offside position.

But the second equaliser of the game stood and that gave Boro the platform to go on and secure maximum points from a televised game for only the third time - out of eight - this season.

Yakubu also had a part to play in James Morrison's first league goal for Boro when he picked the Darlington youngster out at the back post, and McClaren was glowing in his tribute to the ex-Pompey man.

McClaren, understandably, did not have a problem with Yakubu's goal either.

"Yakubu came in and slid from behind Jimmy. If he is behind him then is he offside?" said McClaren.

"I admit the second goal looked offside but Yakubu did come from behind him. But regardless of that goal Yakubu was exceptional and awesome. He is a fantastic player, great to watch, and causes allsorts of problems for defenders.

"His goal was fortunate from our point of view.

"We probably had two incidents where the luck has gone for us, including when Brian McBride headed against the post, and hopefully that will take us on now. There's been too many occasions where we have not had the luck. We did today."

Despite the fact that Boro scored three goals, as they came from behind twice to secure the points, McClaren admits that he was annoyed by the club's failure to keep a clean sheet.

It is now ten matches since Boro have not conceded in the league - something that has stopped them from becoming a permanent fixture in the top half of the table.

They now face West Brom next Sunday - after Thursday's UEFA Cup meeting with AZ Alkmaar - with a real chance of earning back-to-back Premiership - victories for the first time in over a year.

And McClaren now wants to see his team go on a roll. "That game summed up our season," he said.

"At times we looked fantastic and at other times we looked like conceding goals.

"We knew there would be goals in this game and this was a massive win for us. I said at half-time that we might have to grind out this result and credit to the players.

"They showed great attitude and character. It was one of those games where you don't want to lose. I'm just thrilled we got the points."

Hasselbaink marked his 250th Premiership appearance with the winning goal in the 84th minute and he now wants to see Boro progress.

"This club needs to be around fifth and sixth," said the Dutchman.

"We need to get a run together. We didn't have the best of starts and hopefully we can keep it going against West Brom. This should be the result we needed."

Boro defender Emanuel Pogatetz could be missing from Thursday's trip to Holland after suffering a broken nose yesterday.

The Austrian was replaced by Szilard Nemeth at half-time and will have checks today at Rockliffe Park.

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