McClaren feels Boro in with a Sporting chance

MIDDLESBROUGH boss Steve McClaren hopes the club’s Premier League demise will serve as a wake-up call to his players but fears the season is beginning to take its toll.

Since the turn of the year Boro have won just one of their nine league matches, securing just seven points, to slip from Champions League hopefuls to outside the top six, leaving their ambitions of a return to Europe next season balancing on a knife-edge.

It is a run McClaren concedes is simply not good enough but, in the light of the club’s injury woes, has been unable to freshen up a team that is struggling physically to cope.