Gary Megson wants his Bolton side to use the performance and point they gained at Craven Cottage this afternoon as a stepping stone to move away from the relegation zone.
Bolton ended their three match losing streak with a spirited display at Fulham, taking the lead through Ivan Klasnic before being pegged back by a Damien Duff equaliser. Megson says he was happy with a point.
When you’re 1-0 up and defending as well as we were, what we needed was to score a second goal and I thought we would have gone on to win with that. But in terms of the honesty of the players, their integrity and their work rate – that was all there and that’s something we need to use to kick on.
It was no great surprise to me to see that those qualities were there, but as I say, we needed to get hold of the ball a little bit better in the second-half to enable ourselves to get out. But you have to get on with it and use the positives which were the performance and the fact that not many teams have come down here and got anything.
Megson had praise for goalscorer Klasnic, but still wants the forward to improve in order to hold down a regular spot.
Ivan would probably be as good a finisher as there is in the Premiership, but there are other things that he needs to add to his game to be a Bolton player. We’re not particularly good at going forward without using the forwards and we don’t get too much down the sides so he has to link up the play a little bit more for us, as did Kevin Davies.
There were a lot of really good things about our play today but I just think the thing that was missing was when the ball went forward we didn’t get hold of it and play from there to enable ourselves to get out. The way the game went, it would be a little bit much to say that we were that much on top that we’re disappointed just to get a point.
