SAM Allardyce had no one else to blame but his players for the loss of another two points from a home game.

While Wanderers' fans were ready to work out their frustration on referee Neale Barry, Allardyce clearly felt the official should not be held responsible for his side's shortcomings.

"I don't think it was his fault. It was our defenders' fault, in fact the whole team's fault for not defending correctly or playing the game out in the right way.

"If you decide to switch off at any time in the Premiership, you get punished."

The manager described the feeling in the dressing room after the game as 'if we had lost 4-0 instead of drawing 1-1' but followed it up with some critical words about his side's play.

"To be honest I'm wondering when they are going to learn the lesson.

"The late goal against Chelsea, then again today, and even looking back to the Liverpool game when we lost to another late strike. We should have learned something from that but we haven't.

"It is not down to bad luck it's down to us.

"It was a great shame because we had ample opportunitues not to let them hurt us at the death by not converting the chances we had.

"But then we saw some naive defending. We had the ball in our possession on a throw-in on the halfway line and all we had to do was retain possession.

Throwing it out of the ground would have been better than what we did.

"In the end we didn't defend a hopeful ball down the middle, ball watched, obviously we were very tired but that was the time to concentrate even more but then of all people Craig Short scores the equaliser.

"Apart from that it was a good derby game, no trouble, no problems I'm glad to say. I thought it was good football, lots of incidents at both ends but in the end we are absolutely distraught that we have thrown those two points away."

Allardyce went on to explain how he had wanted his side to put a good run together after the win at Leeds and that it should have worked out that way.

"We should be sat here with three wins out of four games. At the end of the day when you look at that table and see only one home win, you know that everything we needed to put that right could have been done in our last two games at the Reebok.

"Sadly we haven't done that so we have to strive on and hope we do correct that sooner rather than later."