FORMER Middlesbrough defender David Wheater is confident Bolton will be up for the task of pegging his boyhood club back in the Championship promotion race despite the threat of administration.

Bolton, who only stayed up on the final day of last season, have started this season reasonably well on the pitch and had collected 11 points before suffering defeat to Steve McClaren’s QPR on Saturday.

That reversal followed the news at one stage that Bolton were heading into administration, meaning a 12-points deduction and a two-year transfer ban until the club agreed a deal to pay its main creditor.

Now Wheater, born and brought up in Redcar and a schoolboy Middlesbrough supporter, will be back at the Riverside Stadium on Wednesday night looking to lift the Trotters’ spirits again, even if that could cost his old club.

And he has hailed the approach of Bolton boss Phil Parkinson, who used to go to Boro matches as a child having as a ten-year-old he moved to Stockton with his parents, during the difficult financial times.

“The manager is brilliant when it comes to this stuff,” Wheater told the Bolton News. “He keeps things steady, doesn’t lie to us, just tells us like men. When you get out there your mind is on football so he makes sure we train as hard as possible.

“It’s tough because you think about the staff and some of them are not highly paid, but they are my mates. I wouldn’t want to see them lose their jobs. Hopefully now it’s sorted and we can push on as a club.

“We’d rather not be seeing that in the papers but that’s the situation we find ourselves in.”

Wheater, part of the FA Youth Cup winning Middlesbrough team in 2004 and moved to Bolton in 2011, has found it strange playing with the threat of administration hanging around.

“It has been weird,” said the 31-year-old, referring to the period that started with the threat of administration and ended with a deal being agreed.

“Going into training knowing you’ve worked so hard to get to 11 points and could be back at minus-one in an hour or so. We trained as normal and the manager said he’d have a word at the end of the session. When we’d finished he said it was all sorted.

“The night before and the morning was a bit tough because you couldn’t help thinking about the points we’d lose.”