Bolton lost again. they lost 1-0 again. They didn’t have many shots on target again. At least they had one, which was one more than last week. Again the effort was there but the quality wasn’t.
It probably isn’t that surprising that the best chance of the game came right at the end. Ben Alnwick went up, and as the ball went back in, he got his head on it, with the effort going wide. That would have been a bizarrely brilliant moment had it gone in, but it would have masked another winless game.
We did have a decent spell in the latter stages of the first half, Gary O’Neil, turning back the clock as he played as a wide midfielder in a 4-4-2, had a shot deflected which would have been going in, Will Buckley had a penalty shout, Sammy Ameobi’s cross required an intervention from Daniel Bentley, who got some good-natured abuse from the travelling Wanderers fans on the terrace through the half he was in front of us. Ameobi, meanwhile, took a free kick which felt like it would be either one for the ages or it would fly into the upper tier. It flew into the upper tier.
Half-time then came and with it took any sort of momentum, for want of a better word. Neal Maupay, a goalscorer, something we simply don’t have, then inevitably put Brentford ahead after the break after a decent move was initially dealt with by David Wheater, but Maupay would still smash the ball in from 12 yards and that was that, pretty much except for Alnwick’s late effort. Should we stick him up front against Rotherham? It probably wouldn’t be any less effective. The effort went wide, which allowed for a very vocal chorus of “**** the Andersons.”