Post-game quotes from the manager as Wanderers fall to late defeat in penultimate pre-season outing
Manager Phil Parkinson spoke to the club’s website following his side’s narrow defeat to Premier League outfit Burnley on Tuesday evening.
Despite falling behind to an early Andre Gray penalty kick, Bolton rallied and were rewarded with an equaliser shortly after half time through Jay Spearing, only to suffer late heartbreak as Josh Ginnelly fired home on the stroke of full time.
And offering up his thoughts on the game following the final whistle at Macron Stadium, Parkinson covered the following points…
On Wanderers’ performance against top flight opposition…
I was pleased with our efforts. We set the team up to be disciplined and hard to break down against a Premier League team.
From the perspective of myself and Steve (Parkin), it was an exercise for us to see if players could take on those roles and responsibilities and play in a disciplined manner. I felt that we did that.
The penalty was disappointing, but in fairness to David Wheater he is behind the other lads in terms of minutes and he was up against a £9 million player.
A fitter David Wheater would have stayed on his feet and ushered him away from goal, but I felt that we restricted them to very little and grew into the game.
That’s what it’s all about when you play teams from the top flight and I thought everybody did their job for the team. We had a little moment of quality too from Jay to get us back into the game.
On conceding a late goal…
To concede in the last minute of the game was frustrating, but if you look at it honestly, we had made a lot of substitutions and disrupted the backline completely by that point.
We still could have dealt with it better but all in all, I felt that the application of the lads was good and we’ve set our stall out here.
It was also a good exercise for me to see what the players are capable of as we bid to pick up results.
On the team’s response to going behind in the game…
There was very little in the game, especially in the first half. We’d look at their game on Saturday against Bradford when they’d scored three quick fire goals and said that we didn’t want that to happen to us.
We wanted a discipline and although we went behind, you could see the lads lifted themselves on the pitch and got back into their stride quickly which is important.
The old saying of "goals change games" – if you concede, you’ve got to stay strong and if you score, then you mustn’t get complacent. They’re key factors in football and I was pleased with the response.
On the trialists in the squad at present…
It’s getting to the stage now where we’ll sit down as a backroom team and then with the chairman later in the week to start making inroads and decisions about what we want to do as the season approaches.
The existing lads, I’m pleased with what we’ve got, but we still need to work on structuring the squad. We’re working towards that though and there’s not a shortage of players who want to come and play for Bolton Wanderers.
You only have to look at the surroundings that we’ve got here to see what a terrific arena this is to play in. I’ve really enjoyed my first taste of it tonight and I’m determined to produce a team that will compete right at the top of this division.
On potential future recruitment ahead of the start of the season…
Ideally, we need some more strength before Sheffield United and I should imagine that everybody else in the league will be looking to do the same.
It’s the first year without the emergency loan window which will no doubt affect things, but everybody is in the same boat and we’ve just got to make sure that we come out on top when it comes to competing for players.
And finally, on the players missing from the squad against Burnley…
Mark Davies is fine – we just gave him a rest tonight. Zach Clough’s hamstring tightened up on Saturday and it is slightly worse than we thought – it’s not a major injury, but at this stage we need to get it right with a long season ahead.
Jamie Proctor, he had a groin problem from last year which has flared up a bit over the weekend but it’s just one we’ve got to manage.
Dorian Dervite meanwhile twisted his knee which was a shame for him – we were looking at giving him 60 or 70 minutes tonight. We don’t know the extent of that yet, but we’ll assess it this week.