Despite Gary Madine notching his tenth goal of the campaign, Wanderers were forced to settle for a solitary point at home to Ipswich Town on Saturday afternoon.
The striker struck shortly after the restart against the Tractor Boys, but saw Joe Garner find the net late on to deny Bolton their third consecutive league victory on home soil.
And speaking following the final whistle, manager Phil Parkinson ocvered these points...
On the disappointment of not seeing the game out…
When you’re 1-0 up, you always expect that you should go on to get all three points. However, Ipswich have got some talented players and the goal they scored kind of summed that up.
From their point of view, it was an excellent goal, but for us, we know we can do better as we got done around the box with a little one-two.
We strived to get that second goal to kill the game off, but we weren’t able to get it and at 1-0, you’re always vulnerable.
I think it’s a decent point for us, but after being 1-0 up, there’s obviously an air of disappointment.
On Gary Madine’s tenth goal of the season…
Gaz got battered from pillar to post today, but he just kept going and got his rewards.
If you put the ball in the right areas for Gaz, he’ll get you goals and it is ironic that everybody will underestimate what a finish that was from him.
It was also a good run from Josh Vela - he got a little nick on the near post and Gaz has reacted terrifically well and guided the ball into the net.
We’re also very pleased that he’s hit double figures at this point in the season.
On Josh Vela coming agonisingly close to a lightening quick goal…
It’s frustrating really as when you look back at it, it was a great opportunity to just get a toe poke on it and just get something on it to get it in the back of the net.
That would have given us a great start, but it wasn’t to be.
I also thought that Dorian Dervite was outstanding today and I have to give him a special mention because Mark Beevers went down ill and we called upon Dorian late on.
He hasn’t played a lot of football lately, but I thought he was man of the match today. He put in an outstanding performance and he deserves a lot of credit for the way he’s trained and conducted himself while he’s been out of the team.
On the return of Karl Henry…
Karl has only trained the last two days and when we analyse the game, we will see that when we got caught deep in that second half, that there was a bit of fatigue in the team.
Sometimes that happens, but Karl was immense again considering how little training he has done this past week.
Fortunately for us, there has been no reaction to his hamstring which is great news.
And finally, on making the most of next weekend’s break from action…
I think with the disruption we’ve had since the Hull game with injuries and players returning to their parent clubs, it gives us a chance to have a little bit of a breather and reassess things.
We would have loved to have gotten through today’s game with all three points, but we’re still out of the bottom three and other teams around us have lost too.
There is now a lot of thinking for us to do as a collective between now and the end of January about potential additions to give this group of players, who have been working so hard on the training ground and pitch, a lift.