In his own words: Jimmy Phillips post-Middlesbrough

Josh Vela had given Wanderers the lead in front of the Sky Sports cameras at Macron Stadium.

But two goals from Jordan Rhodes, the second of which came deep into stoppage time, ultimately secured victory for table-topping Middlesbrough.

And speaking in his post-match press conference, Phillips covered the below points.

It’s tough to take, especially as we had taken the lead. We had something to hold on to, but I think the turning point from our point of view was the substitution of Emile Heskey. He’d given us everything and when he came off we no longer had someone to hold the ball up.

I think we saw a response following last week’s defeat at Derby. We showed some fight and that has to be the case between now and the end of the season. We encouraged the players to get on the ball and be positive in possession when they could. I felt we held a pretty decent shape and gave it a real good go, accepting that there are still areas we need to work on.

When the ball hit the foot of the post late on I thought we were going to hold on for the draw but it wasn’t to be. Middlesbrough brought on some real quality in the second half and that certainly helped them. They had a variety of attacking players on the pitch and were throwing men forward late on. 

There are going to be three teams promoted and I hope that they are one of them. I had some fantastic memories from my time there as a player. Of course today, leading Bolton Wanderers, I wanted us to get the result and give them as difficult of a game as we could. Now all is said and done I wish them well going forward.

It seems to be pretty much as you were right now. I’m sure plenty of work is being done by Ken Anderson and Dean Holdsworth behind the scenes and we’ll see where that takes us. I was asked to take the team until the end of the season and until otherwise I’ll continue to do that and give it my all.