Wanderers fell to their first league defeat of the campaign at the hands of Sheffield United on Saturday afternoon.
Goals from Mark Duffy, Kieron Freeman and John Fleck were the result of the Whites’ loss. When speaking to bwfc.co.uk, manager Phil Parkinson covered the following topics…
On the assessment of the game…
They were better than us and sharper all over the pitch and we were punished for that.
At the start of the season we’ve been very resilient as a team and stayed in games, today we didn’t do that.
Them (Sheffield United) not having a midweek game perhaps created that extra bit of freshness in the legs.
As a team we've been below our level and we have to stay with runners and do all those horrible things in a football game to make sure we’re in it and we went away from doing that today.
In fairness to the lads, we never shied away from having the ball, we tried to switch the play and got in some good crossing positions and nearly scored a couple of goals ourselves.
We didn’t give in or stop but everyone at the game today will say the start cost us. We take the defeat firmly on the chin and get back to the drawing board on Monday.
On the manner of the goals conceded…
The first one, Duffy’s run should been tracked, the third was similar, with Fleck, he's run off our midfield and got a tap in and those two in particular are easily avoided. The second was a bizzare goal, its gone through two sets of legs and ended up in the bottom corner.
Staying in games is about staying with runners and doing all those horrible things which you've got to do on a football pitch and we haven't done them today.
On whether 5 points from 10 is the motivation to get back to winning ways/back to the standards set in recent weeks….
If you go below your levels and coast at the start of games in any division you'll get punished and thats whats happened today.
People who've seen us play so far this season will call Bolton a resilient, gritty and determined team but I don't think they would say that about us today.
The lads have worked extremely hard so far this season, right through pre-season and at the start of the season, so we won’t get too despondent with a defeat as we weren't getting too elated after recent victories.
We’ve got to focus on what we need to do next week/
On Craig Noone missing out…
We decided to just go with one wide player on the bench in Yanic (Wildschut), knowing that Clayton (Donaldson) can also play wide and that Yanic’s come off the bench and scored us a couple of goals so I just went with Yanic over Craig.
Craig was very unlucky not to be involved today.
On the local derby game against Preston and how the team have got to respond…
We need to play with a bit more fire in our bellies, we let Sheffield United dictate to us today and that can’t that happen at Deepdale next week.