Bolton Wanderers were left with themselves to blame after dominating large parts of their clash against Plymouth Argyle but suffered a 2-0 loss on the road.
Wanderers had started the first half well and went close to going ahead through Kieran Lee in the opening 30 minutes, but his effort was deflected wide. Conor Bradley also saw a low effort go wide of goal.
But Wanderers were meant to pay for defensive frailties when Niall Ennis got the better of skipper Ricardo Santos to slot past James Trafford. It was a sucker punch for the visitors.
The Whites should have equalised after the break when Amadou Bakayoko's effort was saved and pushed onto the post by Pilgrims goalkeeper Michael Cooper. But Ryan Hardie fired home a late second to ensure the hosts would claim the three points.
After the game, Wanderers boss Ian Evatt spoke to the press and here's his immediate reaction.
What’s your assessment of that?
“I’m trying to figure out how we lost. I know how we lost, we lost again the moments. Between boxes, we controlled the game, completely dominated the game. But we lost the battle and we lost the moments in both boxes.
“We had enough chances to win four or five games and their two moments we didn’t defend well enough and if you do that, you lose football matches. We’ve come here, we’ve completely dominated, completely dictated the game and just been sucker punched twice and we have to be better.”
How do you fix it?
“We fix it by defending our own box better and making sure we take our chances. We’ve had enough chances here to win three or four games and you can say the keeper has made good saves, he shouldn’t have a chance to make a save. It should be finished clinically, job done.
“I’m completely baffled as to how we’ve lost, but I also know how we’ve lost with the fact that we’ve lost the moments in both boxes.”
You gifted the first goal, a similar thing happened against Sheffield Wednesday - that must be a concern?
“Two different types of goals, the first one was an in possession mistake, the second today is just terrible defending, rank bad defending and we have to be better.
“But we can’t just blame the back three, four, five, whatever we play, everyone has to take responsibility because I’ve been in changing rooms where defenders blame the attackers for not taking chances, attackers blame defenders for not keeping clean sheets. It’s a vicious circle and the facts are they both need to be better. We need to take our chances and they need to defend better, it’s as simple as that.”
Three defeats in a week, is that a concern?
“If we play like that I think we’ll win a lot more games than we lose, I think we can’t overreact and say it was a poor performance, it wasn’t. We’ve dominated but we just didn’t take the moments in both boxes, simple as that.”
You made another five changes, is there a rethink needed there as you’ve made a lot of changes in recent matches?
“I don’t think the five changes affected our performance, I think the performance was generally good. Tell me how many teams would come here and dominate them like that, not many, but you have to win the moments.
"Football is about moments and you have to win the battle in both boxes regardless of what goes on inbetween and how well we play, move and pass the ball, you need to be better in both boxes and today we weren’t.”
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