What Lennon Thought - Derby

Neil Lennon says his side’s performance at Derby wasn’t good enough.

Bolton were well beaten at The iPro Stadium, with game ultimately being settled with three quickfire goals around the half time interval.

Bolton did salvage a lifeline through debutant Filip Twardzik, but in the end the hosts would prove too strong.

“We were poor,” the manager said after the game. “For the first 40 minutes we did okay. We then went behind to a wonder free kick from Tom Ince and after that we didn’t react well enough.

“We’ve committed suicide with the second and third goals and when you do that against a quality side like Derby they will punish you.

“We lost Trotter and Wheater to injury at half time and we looked a little bit lightweight in the second half.

“Even at 2-0 you think we have a chance, but the third goal is the killer and overall I’m not happy with the level of our performance at all.

“People will say there is a knock on from the game against Liverpool midweek, but we should have learned from the first time we played them and then went and got well beaten at Rotherham.

“There are few positives we’re able to take away from today. Twardzik scored on his debut and looked neat and today and Bannan did okay.

“But on the whole we weren’t good enough. We can’t keep making excuses.

“We had a lot of younger lads out there today, so we maybe need to look at getting some more of the experienced lads back in the squad.

“We’ll have Neil Danns available for Tuesday night, and hopefully in the coming weeks we’ll have a bit of help for Adam up top with the return of Craig Davies and Heskey."

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Straight talking assessment. I wonder if Megson, Coyle or Freedman ever knew what that was. He was honest without being over the top in his criticism and he didn't say "we're about to turn a corner" or we were unlucky. He said we need some experienced players back and he made no excuses about the Liverpool game. In fact he went out of his way to say we should have learned our lesson from the first match but didn't take it onboard the way we should have. 

I suspect we'll see much improvement in the next game and anyone who doesn't will be dropped faster than a Nick Clegg promise on Tuition Fees.

Good on Lennon for accepting his failings and not blaming his inability to motivate the players after the Liverpool game on Freedman.

it will be interesting to see what team he can put out tomorrow with so many injuries. I would guess he would go for a flat back 4 now we have Mills and Wheater injured. I would like to see McNaughton in at right back and since we only have 2 centre halves left it will have to be Ream and Dervite. That means Moxey will have to play left back