Bolton Wanderers were defeated 3-0 by Nottingham Forest on Wednesday evening in the Sky Bet Championship. When speaking to bwfc.co.uk after the game, manager Phil Parkinson covered these following topics.
On his assessment of the game…
We started the game poorly, in terms of giving the ball away too many times too cheaply.
When you do that against a team of Nottingham Forest’s standard, you quickly become under pressure.
They looked like a team that spent a lot of money tonight and looked very dangerous.
The first goal was of our own making, even though it was a great finish from Joe Lolley.
After that, I thought we did better.
After half-time, we started well but when you are chasing a game against a team of their quality, you are always vulnerable on the counter.
We left our back four exposed too many times tonight and we need to look at that.
On starting the second half brighter…
Obviously being 1-0 down and making a change at the break, we came out as positive as we could.
We weren’t able to get that goal, but as the game wore on, we threw more caution to the wind and they obviously had the quality to get at us on the counter and that is what happened tonight.
On Pawel Olkowski’s late absence…
Pawel had a bit of a stomach bug yesterday and we thought he was okay today.
He came in, we named the team and then he took a turn for the worst and was unable to start.
I thought Mark Little came in and did well because that was a big ask of him.
Little and Andy Taylor came in and gave their all.
On both penalty decisions…
I think contentious is the right word to use.
Obviously, Grabban gets a lot of penalties and the second one in particular, from the viewpoint I had, I could see that Ben had taken his hands away.
I don’t think anyone could believe when he gave it.
I suppose referees and officials need to know the players they are dealing with and they have got a lot of penalties this season.
I haven’t seen them all, but they certainly bought both of the decisions tonight.
On moving on to Hull City this weekend…
We have to show bravery.
We always have to review the games, meet as a staff tomorrow and pick a team that we believe can go out there and show bravery.
Hull are going to be low, as they lost late on tonight and had a long trip down to Bristol.
We will be ready for Saturday. We have two games this week and lost one, now is the time to bounce back at the weekend.