GARETH SOUTHGATE’S right-hand man has urged the whole of the town to unite behind the club, promising that the players will help put the pride back into Middlesbrough.

Championship football returns to Teesside on Saturday when Watford visit, with Derby County at home three days later.

The victory at Reading before the international break was welcome relief after the barracking Southgate and his players received after the 1-0 home defeat to Leicester on September 29.

But since then there has been a collective acceptance within the corridors at the club’s Rockliffe Park training base that things needed to change when they play in front of their own fans.

And Alan Smith, the football consultant who was appointed in the summer, has been working closely with the coaching staff and players in an attempt to iron out the reasons why Middlesbrough have been struggling to reproduce away day displays at the Riverside Stadium.

He was keen to stress that his comments were not a public relations exercise, purely an attempt to convince disaffected supporters that every member of the club’s management, backroom staff and players are desperate to right the wrongs of last season.

“It was a disaster going down. What we have to do is put some pride back into this football club,” said Smith.

“The fans have been hurt, we know that, it was a disaster and we took that responsibility on board. The big thing is we have to get the pride back into playing for this club.

“Decisions had to be made in the summer and now we have a committed group who all want to play for this football club, they want to play for the fans.

“The support we have had away from home has been hugely influential in us getting the points. We have to develop that into the home games as well.

“We are a tight town, a small town in terms of numbers, and we must not be divided in our aims and what we are trying to do. We want to get back in the Premier League.”

Smith may not be alongside the rest of the coaching staff in the dug-outs on a matchday, but he does have a major role to play in helping to prepare the players, coaches and manager for matches.

The former Crystal Palace boss, who had Southgate as his captain at Selhurst Park, has tried to identify why Middlesbrough have failed to perform on home soil.

“We have to be honest and say that our performances have not been as good at home as they have been away. The manager knows it, the staff know it and the players know it,” he said.

“We have worked on that, we have had a different approach to the game and we are looking to tackle it slightly differently. We thought we would win the Leicester and West Brom games. We lost them both and we pinpointed why we lost the next day. We had to. We put that right immediately at Reading.”