Bolton suffered a massive setback in their promotion hunt today as they lost 2-1 to bottom side Grimsby.
It wasn’t just the result, but the manner of it. Whereas we played well at Newport, this performance was way off where it needed to be. I have no idea whether the Salford win took a lot out of unchanged side, but whatever the reason, it was hugely disappointing, and the tone was set from the off when Fleetwood loanee Jay Matete scored after just 32 seconds.
And we never really recovered, At the back, we struggled physically against the Grimsby front two, and even though Matt Gilks was exceptional, including that quadruple save early in the second half, even he was prone to the odd error. We gave away 28 shots, which wouldn’t be surprising if it was the most we gave away all season, while going forward we wasted what chances we did have. It would have been a great game for a neutral or a Grimsby fan, just not for us.
The best chance fell to George Thomason but he was somehow denied by Grimsby’s keeper, while Dapo Afolayan put one over the bar. It took until deep into stoppage time for us to take one of those chances, when Shaun Miller, off the bench, managed to at least dirty Grimsby’s sheet.
It was a bad day elsewhere too, while results have often gone for us in recent weeks, allowing us to reel others in, today saw Cambridge open up a gap over us, while Morecambe beat Oldham to go within a point of us. Still, though, with four games to go, we’re in an automatic promotion spot, and we go to Morecambe next Saturday. We do need another source of goals though, hopefully Antoni Sarcevic will be back soon to help with that.