GARY O'NEIL is backing Gareth Southgate to lead Boro back into the Barclays Premier League after a "horrible" relegation to the Championship.

Despite being strongly linked with a move away from the club in mid-season, O'Neil was one of Boro's most consistent performers in a poor season.

The £5m signing from Portsmouth finished the season with four goals with a strike in the final day defeat at West Ham that condemned Boro to the drop.

Southgate has faced criticism from fans and media as a result of Boro's struggle, but O'Neil believes he is the man to turn the club around and mount a promotion charge next season.

"He's a fantastic manager, I can't speak too highly of him," said the midfielder. "He's been fantastic with me.

"He works every hour he can to improve as a manager and do what's right for the football club. I know we'll be looking to bounce back and he's definitely the right man to take us back up."

Asked how he felt about Boro's relegation, O'Neil replied: "It's a horrible feeling. It was my worst day in football by far. I've never experienced anything like it and everybody's hurting.

"It's a very tough league and we just came up short. We seemed to have numerous chances to get ourselves out of it but we didn't take them and that's really disappointing. We weren't able to impose ourselves on games.

"When you're 1-0 down you sometimes need a target man as a different option and that's not something we had either."

O'Neil believes Boro will need to make the changes to the squad that Gareth Southgate has promised. "We've got to strengthen because we lacked a bit of experience this season," he said. "We've got a very small, young squad and we weren't able to cope with injuries. We took a risk going into the season with a small squad.

"We picked up too many injuries, we lost Didier Digard and some other key players midway through the season and we missed them."

So does O'Neil expect he will be one of the club's summer departures? "I haven't thought about myself yet, but I would think there will be players leaving and I think there'll be a few incoming too. I've got the summer now to go away and think about it."