Neither team deserved to win, and neither team did as Bolton and Fulham managed to provide an unbelievably boring 90 minutes of football. They may not have deserved it, but Bolton really should have won it - however they are likely to go unpunished unless Reading can come away from Stamford Bridge with a point or more. If so, Bolton will drop to 16th, otherwise they will remain in 15th place.
Fulham slightly edged it in the first half, forcing a couple of saves from Jaaskelainen. Steinsson went close for Bolton with an acrobatic effort, while Guthrie dragged a shot well wide when he should at least forced Niemi into a save. Joey O’Brien did a little better from a slightly trickier angle, but couldn’t beat “Finland’s number two”, as the Bolton fans took to calling him (in reality Niemi retired from international football before Jussi took the number one shirt).
O’Brien was swapped at half time for Tamir Cohen, who put in quite a poor performance yet the change seemed to help Bolton who were clearly on top in the second half. Steinsson showed some pace whilst upfield to beat the Fulham defender and get a cross in, but Matt Taylor couldn’t reach Nolan’s flick-on sliding in at the far post. The match wore on and Bolton had more and more chances. The best fell to Michalik, who volleyed wide with the entire goal to aim at after Niemi’s weak punch fell to him inside the box. Unbelievably Michalik had two more chances, and one forced a save out of Antti Niemi, the other he sent well over the bar. It was very obvious that we need to get a striker. There were some fans chanting Eidur Gudjohnsen’s name, but that’s a little optimistic.
Megson did bring a striker on in Heidar Helguson, but too late to help. Helguson was brought on to face his former team after recovering from injury. Cohen sent a shot just wide in added time, but both teams came away from the Reebok with one more point than they deserved.
The frustration was clear for all to hear from the fans at the end but you could see the Fulham players were delighted to come away with a point.
We needed to score to settle down a bit but there’s going to be a lot of games up and down the country like that at the moment.
We are down in the bottom six or seven but that might prove to be a decent point at the end of the season, though our quality wasn’t there today.
We have to take a positive from tonight and that’s a clean sheet.
- Gary Megson
