MOTM: Ipswich 1-0 Bolton Wanderers: Rochinha

Bolton Wanderers fell to another narrow away defeat on Tuesday night, this time 240 miles away at Ipswich Town, as Jay Tabb struck a deflected volley late on which wrong footed everyone and landed into the goal.

One thing that was in contrast to our other previous away day failures, however, is that we actually played really quite well. At least in the first half.

We attacked with pace and creativeness and really should have been 3-0 up at half-time, as three golden opportunities were squandered - in typical Bolton fashion.

The main instigator for a lot of our exciting attacking play in the opening forty-five minutes was a nineteen year old midfielder making his first appearance in a whites shirt, and whilst youngsters Josh Vela and Tom Walker both had very good games, there can only be one real contender for my man of the match: Diogo Filipe Costa Rocha.

Or Rochinha, to you and me. The 5ft7" tall creative midfielder showed exactly what he was capable of on his debut for the club. Signed on loan from Benfica in January, Rochinha was yet to feature in the first time up until the last night, and it would seem like we've been missing out on quite a player and a natural replacement to Zach Clough.

My viewing of his performance has been limited to highlights of the game and the heaps of praise that flooded in for him on the internet, but from all that I've gathered he was great. Well, just like the entire team, mostly only in the first half.

He was running his markers ragged and had them terrified when he turned to run at them, he beat opposition defenders with ease on several occasions and linked with team mates well with some really intricate passing countless times. He even nearly managed to cap it all off with a goal that many have said would have easily been goal of the season. As he exchanged a volley of passes with Eidur Gudjohnsen, shrugged off a defender and played a one-two with Craig Davies, but he agonisingly placed his finish an inch wide of the post.

As mentioned, Rochinha's opportunities have been non-exscistant until now, but now he's proved that he can play in the first team and he is capable of implementing his skill in a game, hopefully we'll see a whole lot more of him. Starting with Wigan on Saturday.