Jay Spearing and John McGinlay Urge Bolton To Play Smarter

Players out of position, allowing too much space to the man on the ball, losing possession in silly areas, and dumb fouls. It seems as though addressing those relatively small problems could be the key to shoring up Bolton's defense, keeping some clean sheets, and winning games. Well, at least according to the pair of Jay Spearing and Super John McGinlay in two separate interviews.

Writing in his Bolton News column last week, Wanderers legend John McGinlay discussed the dumb mistakes that Bolton make in games:

A case in point was Chris Eagles on Saturday. We were 1-0 up in the first half and attacking when he tried a fancy reverse pass when a normal one would have done. It ended up looking ridiculous and 60 seconds later Adam Bogdan was picking the ball out of his own net.

I don't want to pick on individuals but little things are making big things at the moment. We should be making sure we stay in games but instead, these bad decisions are allowing teams to get their tails up.

We can't be too proud to put our foot through the ball if need be, and I'd say that's definitely the case at the back.

I think Tim Ream was guilty a couple of times of trying to over-play and that's been the case on a few occasions since the start of the season.

We need to get those basics right and earn the right to play good football before we attempt all that fancy stuff, and that's more so the case here in the Championship than anywhere else.

While in a new interview with the BN, loan signing Jay Spearing elaborated on many of the same ideas:

"I believe we have got a great team but against Hull it never worked for us. I wouldn't say it was difficult debut for me, because we started off really well. When we got the ball down and played, I thought we were the better team. It was just individual errors that caused us problems and we have to stop those straight away if we want to be near the top.

"Looking back, they didn't put us under a lot of pressure. It was just our own mistakes. The players we have got here are more than capable of beating teams like Hull and anyone else in this league. If we get our heads together and stop making silly mistakes, I think we will be right up there.

"We wanted to go into this break with a win. But there is nothing we can do about it now. I think it is a bad thing. Any team that loses wants to put it right as soon as possible with a win. We have got to get back in and get ready for the home game against Watford.

"We really do need to get as many points as possible."