Bolton repaired the confidence, and goal difference, lost at Anfield last week by beating Wigan 4-1 this weekend. With that scoreline, you almost forget that your 8 million pound striker sent a penalty miles over the crossbar…
Both teams started brightly, but Bolton made the breakthrough in just the third minute when Paul Scharner headed into his own net under no pressure from the whites. But some bad defending cost Bolton their lead less than ten minutes later, when Meite’s awful clearance (if it can be called a clearance) found Denny Landzaat on the edge of Bolton’s penalty area, and the Dutchman fired the ball past Jaaskelainen for the equaliser.
Not long after this Bolton really should have been ahead when Granqvist handled the ball and Martin Atkinson pointed to the spot, but Nicolas Anelka sent the penalty over the crossbar by quite a long way, much to the delight of the Wigan fans behind the goal. But they were ahead soon after when Nicky Hunt stopped Wigan’s break early before passing to Anelka in the box, and Nolan backheeled the ball home.
The teams went in for the break with Bolton leading, but the Wigan fans enjoyed themselves watching the replay of Anelka’s second howler in two weeks. And straight after the restart they had more reason to tease the Frenchman when he sent his shot high and wide with just Kirkland to beat.
Then Wigan had just about their only spell of constant pressure - winning seven corners in a row! Jussi made two good saves in that spell, before Heskey ended it by sending his header over when it looked like he would equalise.
And Bolton managed to kill the game off when Diouf floated his free kick to the far post where Davies poked the ball into the Wigan net for 3, and Anelka finally got his goal in the 89th minute when Nolan’s dummy gifted him an easy chance to make up for his earlier misses.
Only Megson’s second win, but he’s starting to convince me.
Nicolas Anelka has got a lot of goals for us, but people I’d expect to be scoring haven’t been so it’s good to see one or two starting to chip in.
It’s as big a win as when we beat Manchester United, it’s a terrific result for us.
The performance could have been better but we got better as the game went on.
- Gary Megson
