IT has not been an easy two months to be either a player or supporter of Middlesbrough Football Club.

Eleventh in the league, boasting just two wins from their last 12 matches, things have not exactly gone to plan since Gordon Strachan replaced Gareth Southgate as manager in mid-October.

Yet for one Middlesbrough player, the club’s recent problems pale into insignificance compared to the fate that has befallen his hometown.

For much of his youth, David Wheater was raised in the Dormanstown area of Redcar, barely a stone’s throw from the giant Corus steel plant that has traditionally provided employment for thousands of people within the town.

On January 27, Corus will close its doors for the final time, and 1,700 workers will be made redundant.

Many of Wheater’s friends will be among them, and had the 22-year-old not carved out a career as a professional footballer, he might well have been sharing their fate.

Little wonder, then, that a losing run on the football field is not regarded as a matter of life and death.

“I know quite a few people involved in Corus, and it’s obviously a really hard time,” said Wheater, who is still proud to call Redcar his home. “Some of my best mates are employed in different parts of Corus, and they don’t really know what’s going to happen in the next few weeks and months “Corus is such a big employer that, if I hadn’t made it in football, there would definitely have been a chance that I would have ended up working there, and now it would be me thinking about being unemployed.

“I’m not saying I would have been clever enough to have got in, mind, but so many people around me work for Corus, that it would obviously have been an option if football hadn’t been my career.

“My first house was in Dormanstown, and that’s only two minutes down the road from Corus.

“I saw the plant every day, so there’s a good chance I would have ended up there.

It must be so hard now not knowing what you’re going to do.”

Wheater’s uncle, Peter Blair, is a former Corus employee, and like the rest of Redcar, the centre-half has found it impossible to ignore the fate of a plant that has become an integral part of the town’s fabric.

A sombre mood has permeated the surrounding area as this month’s closure date has drawn near and, unsurprisingly, Redcar’s residents are seeking an escape from the harsh financial realities that are enveloping them.

Middlesbrough Football Club provides one such escape.

While recent results have been as grim as Teesside’s wider economic outlook, Wheater is aware of the club’s privileged position in terms of providing some much-needed relief.

“When you walk around the town, you can tell the mood is really downbeat and sombre,” he said.

“There are already a lot of shops that have shut – there are hardly any shops in Redcar now – and it’s hard to see how things are going to improve. No-one has any money any more.

“Middlesbrough Football Club is one of the biggest things around here, so we know, as players, we have a responsibility to try to keep people’s spirits up.

Everybody loves this football club, so if we start winning games, hopefully it’ll help put a smile back on people’s faces. We get paid to keep the fans happy.”

There hasn’t been much happiness emanating from the Riverside stands in recent weeks, with Boro losing four of their last six home games in all competitions.

Wheater is the club’s only ever-present this season but, by his own admission, his form has failed to reach the heights that were scaled as he played himself into the England squad in the latter stages of the Teessiders’ stay in the Premier League.

An ever-changing cast of centre-halves hasn’t helped – Chris Riggott became Wheater’s sixth defensive partner when he returned to the side in the Boxing Day win over Scunthorpe – and stability is the one commodity Wheater covets above all others as he looks ahead to the second half of the season.

“It would be nice to get a settled relationship going,”

he said. “I think that’s what I need most of all really. I’ve had lots of different partners and that can’t be good for anyone.

“I know I haven’t been playing to my best in a few matches, but you have to keep training hard and believing that it’ll turn around.

“You have to have belief in yourself. As a footballer, you have to believe you can be one of the best players in your position in the league.”

You also have to retain a belief in your team’s prospects, and with Strachan expected to make a number of signings before the transfer window closes on February 1, Wheater insists that promotion remains a realistic ambition.

“The manager definitely wants to bring players in, so that’s going to help us,” he said.

“It’ll lift the fans, but most of all, it’ll make us perform better as players because it’s our places in the team that are on the line.

“If the manager brings a centre-half in, I’m going to have to pick up my performances to keep my place in the team.

“There are plenty of games to go, and plenty of opportunities to get wins.

The play-offs are the most likely target now, but if we can get there, it’ll only need a couple of good results to get us back in the Premier League. That’s still our goal.”