IAN Holloway has reacted with disbelief to Dougie Freedman’s suggestion Bolton controlled today’s 1-1 draw with Millwall at The Den.
The Lions had two efforts cleared off the line in the first half after falling behind to Lukas Jutkiewicz’s 15th minute header.
Holloway went for broke early in the second half by making a triple substitution which saw attacking trio Simeon Jackson, DJ Campbell and Scott McDonald come in.
However, it was the Trotters who should have made the game safe when Danny Shittu was adjudged to have handled in his own area, only for Jutkiewicz’s poor penalty to be easily saved by David Forde.
But Millwall’s persistence was rewarded eight minutes from the end as Martyn Woolford swept home a deserved equaliser, prompting more than a few raised eyebrows from reporters in Freedman’s post-match press conference when he claimed his side had been unlucky not to win.
Holloway said: “Well, to be honest with you if that is what you think controlling the game is I’m glad I’m sat in this seat (talking to the press).
“I don’t want to sit down with Doug and have a drink with him because that isn’t how you control a game in my opinion, but that’s the beautiful thing about football.
“I suggest he reads some stats to see how many chances he created and whether he would be bored senseless watching it.
“I’m deadly serious because really you pay a lot of money for a ticket and you want to see your team get some shots at goal, so if that is planning a game I would be bored senseless. Seriously.”
Holloway also denied Forde’s penalty save had raised his confidence of rescuing something from the game and questioned why the spot-kick had been awarded against Shittu in the first place.
The Den chief said: “It certainly didn’t give me the lift I needed.
“Did he handball it or was it his foot? It looked like he played it with his foot.
“It looked like déjà-vu over and over again except we were creating chances, which is more than we’ve done, and I thought the lads kept going.
“I thought we got one or two things slightly wrong, we overplayed a little bit in the first half.”
Holloway added: “The fans were completely brilliant by not moaning at half-time.
“They didn’t boo us and that gave me an impetus to say to the lads ‘come on they’re with you’ and basically let’s get forward a bit earlier.
“I knew I had the gun power to try on the bench and I knew we would create chances and I knew we would at least get one, so I wasn’t that perturbed.
“I was perturbed because it took so long but when you look at the overall performance I can see what we are trying to do, I can see some belief coming but at the moment they had one cross, one diving header and it went in off the post and then they had a penalty.”
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