Aaron Wilbraham’s injury time header earned Wanderers a deserved share of the spoils against Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough on Saturday afternoon.
The hosts had taken the lead in fortuitous circumstances late in the clash, with George Boyd’s effort standing despite the assistant referee seemingly raising his flag.
But substitute Wilbraham remained cool, calm and collected to nod home a leveller deep into stoppage time to the delight of the traveling Bolton faithful.
And speaking following the final whistle at Hillsborough, manager Phil Parkinson covered these points…
On the rollercoaster of emotions in the game…
With the manner of the performance, we certainly deserved all three points. The goal we conceded though was a real blow because Rhodes has made a run and the linesman has flagged him for being offside in the centre of the goal.
Boyd is onside, but with Rhodes’ position, it affects Mark Beevers’ ability to get across and make a block.
If that isn’t interfering with play, I don’t know what is.
Everybody will watch it back and make their own mind up, but if a striker is in the middle of the goal in an offside position, then he is offside and is interfering with play.
It was a blow and everybody could feel it on the bench – we all just slumped back into our seats because we’d played so well up to that point.
Credit to the lads however, they kept going and got a deserved equaliser courtesy of a fantastic cross by Morais and an excellent header by Wilbraham.
On Aaron Wilbraham getting his long-awaited first goal for the club…
Alby has waited so long for a moment like that and it frustrates me that he’s gotten a bit of criticism along the way because he’s hardly had any game time.
He’s played against Sunderland and Sheffield Wednesday in the cup and we won both games and he’s been a tremendous role model around the training ground for our younger players too, none more so than Gary Madine.
What we said to Alby when he came in was that we had a very good player in Gaz and we wanted him to help him learn his trade and how to conduct himself as a professional player, and he did exactly that.
We sold Gary for a lot of money, but I want the fans to get behind Alby because he will play his part in this final run-in.
On the players’ endeavour and creativity…
We looked dangerous today – Will had a great chance in the first half at the back stick with a header where the keeper has made a good save.
We had a couple of other good moments, some of which we were wasteful with, but you can’t fault the lads too much, especially given that we’ve had two away games inside four days which is always difficult.
We went with more or less the same team today, making a couple of changes from Tuesday, but all in all, I couldn’t ask for any more of them.
I’d also like to thank the supporters too as that was a tremendous away backing that we got today.
On Sammy Ameobi and Derik Osede’s returns to the team…
Sammy had taken a knee to the back and wasn’t quite right, but with Morais having a problem with his calf, it was important that we put some freshness in wide positions and I thought Sammy did well today.
I thought Derik did excellently meanwhile. When you play against three at the back, especially with the system we play, it is important that you switch the ball quickly and get it to the full-backs, and I thought Derik and Karl Henry did that really well.
The full-backs meanwhile used the ball really well which is crucial. Derik however impressed me today.
We have had some indifferent results in recent weeks, but he’s come back in today and really staked a claim for his place in the team.
And finally, on the challenge of Aston Villa next up…
I can’t wait for next weekend’s game already, one live on television too. We head into it off the back of two good results on our travels and now we need to get our home form back on track.