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*Angel appears devilishly late to stall Bolton’s momentum*

Caught between the euphoria of comprehensively defeating Arsenal in their previous Premiership match and the decidedly awkward psychological preparation before Wednesday’s Uefa Cup match against Seville, with Bolton needing only a draw to make certain of progress, Sam Allardyce had stressed the necessity of maintaining momentum against Villa. But, lo, an Angel appeared and Wanderers were sore distressed.

When any team are punching above their weight, as Bolton most gratifyingly have been doing for several seasons now, there is always the danger that a temporary dip in form will have a markedly greater effect on a season than it might on clubs with altogether more resources.

Allardyce has picked and mixed to startling effect - a mere 16 years ago the club was congratulating itself on having won the Sherpa Van Trophy - to lift Bolton to undreamed heights but on Saturday he could not stop himself fretting slightly at the thought of perhaps losing to the Spaniards in midweek and then missing out against Wigan in the Carling Cup quarter-finals.

This was a tired performance, not physically so much as mentally. Villa offered little more than hard graft for the majority of a generally anodyne confrontation of the sort that is depressingly prevalent in the Premiership. But at least when El Hadji Diouf scored
in the 82nd minute there was the feeling that, despite playing well below their best, Bolton had finally made their class tell.

Given that they had conceded only once in the Premiership at the Reebok this season, losing 1-0 at home to Everton in August, there seemed no reason to suppose that Villa, for whom Milan Baros had been singularly ineffective, would equalise. However, Juan Pablo Angel and Luke Moore, both late substitutes, combined two minutes from time to silence starkly the home fans’ merriment.

For all their defensive excellence, Bolton have yet to score more than two goals in any match this season, and Allardyce admitted that “you can’t keep expecting our defence to bail out the attack”. It was Diouf’s first goal since mid-September and Kevin Davies has not scored since the opening match of the season. And now Kevin Nolan has hit a lean spell. Hence Allardyce’s criticism of his back four over Angel’s goal - the Colombian being conspicuously unmarked - was tempered.

Bolton, as a unit, work exceptionally at closing down space and nipping trouble in the bud. Most fans may have raged against the absence of marking for Villa’s equaliser; Allardyce’s greater concern was the “lack of professionalism” at a throw-in before the goal was scored when Villa were allowed undue time on the ball. It is this attention to detail, imbued and instilled in midweek training, that has made Bolton such formidable opponents.

Having lost to Middlesbrough in the Carling Cup final in 2004, Bolton now badly need something to show for all their efforts. What has been achieved is remarkable and hence the obvious annoyance, as in this match, when standards temporarily drop and momentum stalls. Allardyce will be hoping that Seville catch the backlash.

As for Villa, the horror of their Carling Cup defeat by Doncaster has been ameliorated a little, although in David O’Leary they have a manager more likely to apportion blame on to anyone - his own players or the opposition - other than himself, as was true when he was at Leeds. The style is a lot of huff and puff but no genuine substance.

For once none of the Premiership teams from the Midlands lost on Saturday, although these days they are pretty much an irrelevance anyway.