Bolton Wanderers midfielder George Thomason said that the 2-1 defeat to Reading ‘hurts’ but they will use it as motivation for next weekend.
Wanderers’ lost for the first time in four weeks to lowly Reading, after taking the lead through Dion Charles. However, goals from Charlie Savage and Caylan Vickers secured a second half comeback for the Royals.
Thomason, who signed a new contract with the club last month, said that the squad will take the ‘hurt’ of the defeat and use it as motivation to beat Peterborough next weekend.
“It hurts but we’ve got to re-group as a squad and have a really positive week to take into the game,” Thomason told the club website.
“One-nil is never a comfortable scoreline and we had enough chances to win the game.
“When you don’t kill the game off, the opposition always have an opportunity and have a spell and they took the spell and we didn’t respond well enough.
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“There have been honest discussions and we all know as a collective, in each group, as defenders, midfielders and attackers what we need to do better.
“We need to re-group. We’ll go through it as we always do and strive to be better and take this hurt into next week and try and put a good performance on next Saturday.”
George Thomason says Bolton need to kill teams off
Thomason expressed Bolton’s need to start killing teams off quickly if they are to keep pushing gear the top of the table.
“As a team, we need to start killing opposition off more because the longer it stays at one, or they’ve got a foot in the game, it just gives them that extra energy to think ‘we can get something here’,” added Thomason.
“That’s the frustrating thing. We do so much well with so many good opportunities and good spells and then it’s about taking our chances and really killing teams off.
“We create enough chances weekly to really punish teams and it’s a habit we need to get better at. It’s something we have talked about. Even when we’ve won games this season, it’s about finding that edge and can we push on to really kill teams off?
“Away from home, when you’re 1-0 up it’s still not a safe place to be, especially when their crowd is on their side and giving them a lift. If it’s two or three, then it’s a different story and you can manage it.
“It’s never easy being 1-0 up and even when they get the equaliser we should have re-grouped better and said ‘this is it, now, we take a point. We have to live and learn and it’s something we have to find instinctively, that cutting edge to really finish teams off.”