Adrian Chiles may be a gurning buffoon who should have realised that a nice spot on the BBC evening sofa was a lot better than an early morning ITV one and trying to get any sense out of Andy Townsend and Gareth Southgate of a European night, but he did bring the phrase “it`s the hope that kills you” to national prominence. On Saturday, Owen Coyle and his band of merry men did just about enough to keep Bolton`s hopes alive before Chelsea, Tottenham and the FA bolstered them.
As you`ll be aware, I was in Durham over the weekend and had promised Mrs X that I wouldn`t be keeping track of the scores as it wouldn`t do my heart any good and we were supposed to be on vacation. Naturally, this promise lasted about five minutes. A visit to Durham Cathedral, a church so big it took over an hour to walk round, was followed by a visit to a pub for the next hour and a half to keep track of the scores without unnecessarily being distracted by gravestones. In the pub were the obligatory Mackems, meaning that I had to keep my oohs and aahs to a minimum.
Naturally, this means that I didn`t get to see the game live, but I do feel like I did and I was almost set for a lynching by other fans on Twitter after confirming that I had offered up a prayer in the Cathedral just before McClean hit his free kick just beyond Bogdan that the Hungarian got a hand to but could have done a lot better with. This was the second free kick that he could have possibly got to within a month, despite there being a lot of pace on the Sunderland midfielders shot. Blame me. Blame God. Blame Bogdan. Or blame that infernal half time team talk, another goal coming within ten minutes of the restart.
Or blame Kevin Davies, whose reckless challenge on Sessegnon was the reason for the free kick. Talisman, warhorse, hero, dirtiest player in Premier League history. SKD has made these kind of challenges throughout his career at Bolton and he is too old to stop now. This is still no excuse for the tackle, although he did appear to pull out just before connection, probably saving himself a card of some colour.
However, this was the only aberration in SKD`s performance as he carried on his impressive performance at Villa with one that had Matthew Kilgallon almost in tears by the time he left the pitch such problems had the captain caused him. It was Kilgallon that had failed to mark SKD as he volleyed in Martin Petrov`s cross for the first goal, a well taken goal that he could easily have hit wide. And it was Kilgallon who was outmuscled for the second goal, SKD heading in Sam Ricketts pinpoint cross.
If this is the SKD we are going to get for the rest of the season then we should be able to rest easy and look forward to trips to the south coast and Berkshire next season. The captain may have appeared thirty three times this year but has, for the most part, been used sparingly as the season has gone on. If this was for him to conserve his energy for the run in, then that is a master stroke by the manager as SKD has put in arguably two of his best performances this season in the past two games.
And we could so easily have won it in the end, if Craig Gordon hadn`t saved well from Klasnic`s turn and shot. At the end, there really was only team that was going to win it.
So, five points from two games. Or five points from five games. Or fourteen points from eight games. The team suddenly appears to have their tails up, just as we enter two games against clubs who may have been knocked sideways by England`s choice of manager. And with Blackburn almost gone, although a draw for them against Wigan would be the best result, and QPR reeling, we suddenly find ourselves as favourites to avoid the drop.
Like Adrian Chiles said, it`s the hope that kills you.
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