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George Johnston reckons his manager Ian Evatt might have a point when he described Wanderers as “naïve” in the aftermath of Saturday’s defeat at Oxford United.
Whilst the club’s defensive record has been solid this season, the centre-back could offer little argument that the team has often been knocked too easily out of its stride by opposing sides slowing down the game, or – to use Evatt’s description – delving into the “darker arts” of football.
Wanderers started brightly against Oxford but Johnston admits they failed to react after conceding a goal on 25 minutes, a lead doubled shortly after half time.
“We have to be more streetwise on the pitch,” he told The Bolton News. “It has happened a couple of times now where one goal has turned into two but we need to learn how to deal better with these things or we are not going to get where we want to be.
“At our place we have to play at a tempo that they can’t live with. When the ball goes out it needs to come back quick, free kicks, throw ins, all the stuff like that.
“I don’t think we have been good enough with that. If we had flown out of the blocks it might have made them sit back a bit and defend but we need to improve.
“Maybe it is naïve, maybe it is something we need to tidy up on and be a bit more robust.”
Oxford are the latest in a string of teams who have successfully managed to affect Wanderers’ rhythm, another being Barnsley, who provide the opposition in this weekend’s FA Cup first round game at the UniBol.
Johnston believes he and his team-mates must find a more effective way of controlling the game.
“I just see it as teams showing us respect,” he said. “They come here and try to interrupt what we do and think the only way they can do it is not actually playing their game, the plan goes out of the window.
“We are going to come up against it more because teams have seen it work against us. “We have to get better at dealing with it all.”
Wanderers had recovered three points from losing positions against Burton Albion and Accrington Stanley in the previous seven days, and Johnston believes the effort may have had an impact on the Oxford performance.
“We had fought back in two tough games and it had been quite an emotional week, draining even,” he said. “But we can’t use it as an excuse because the manager freshened things up, made changes, and we just looked devoid of ideas. We didn’t recognise what they were doing fast enough.
“We are disappointed first of all by the way we played, we are capable of so much more.
“When we got it back to 2-1 we were thinking ‘here we go again’ but that third goal killed us, sapped all our energy and even though we kept knocking on the door, our final detail quality just wasn’t there.”
Oxford profited from some uncharacteristically ponderous defending on Saturday, particularly in their first and third goal of the afternoon.
Whilst disappointed, Johnston insists they are not a sign of longer term problems at the back for Bolton.
“I don’t think there needs to be concern about the goals, yes those ones were preventable but you have seen our defensive record and I think we can get back to those clean sheets,” he said.
“It is so frustrating conceding the cheap goals, it angers us all.
“But we aren’t getting cut or split open, it shows we are doing something right defensively.
“It is frustrating that we have to work so hard to score our goals but we gave up easy ones there.”
With a full week of the training ground ahead, Johnston reckons the players and coaching staff will be grateful for the lack of a midweek game.
Wanderers may be out of the top six by the time they next play in League One at Cambridge United a week on Saturday but the distraction of the FA Cup and some extra time to work together at Lostock will be beneficial, says the former Liverpool man.
“I think it can be good for us this week,” he said. “It gives us a chance to reset and not think about the league for a bit but we know it will be a tough game and we want to go on a good cup run.
“It gives us a chance to reset, mentally, now. We haven’t played well in the past few games but we have been able to get a couple of results and make sure the league position is still pretty good.
“It has also given us the idea that it does need to be better, going forward, especially against the better teams because we can’t keep coming back every time.
“It is difficult playing Saturday-Tuesday, especially with the emotions we have had.
“It will be good to have a little bit of a rest but we will be working hard in training to put that result right.”
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