A PLEASANT drive over the Woodhead Pass in the brilliant winter sun, an excellent lunch and a couple of pints of Timothy Taylor Gold at the Lord Nelson at Hoylandswaine and we arrived at a freezing Oakwell, where the stewards had optimistically put out buckets for a Flare Amnesty.

There was plenty of the festive spirit on show with Batman and Robin, Superman, Woody and a good selection of Santa Claus boosting the fantastic away support. A special mention should go to Frank for wearing his Christmas turkey on his head.

Dougie sprang a few surprises with his team selection, bravely bringing back Zat Knight and Darren Pratley, while giving Mark Davies a start.

He seemed to have got it wrong as another poor first-half performance followed with Andy Lonergan and their poor finishing saving us on numerous occasions. Dougie left the field at half time to a torrent of abuse from some of the Wanderers fans.

Once again Dougie’s half-time team talk got us going and we dominated most of the second half.

Mark Davies started to make runs forward and Neil Danns curled in a great winner on his farewell appearance.

The fans left the Bolton management in no doubt that Danns would be most welcome back at the Reebok.

Medo and Mills came on for the last 10 minutes, when Bolton decided to re-enact the Alamo, but we held on for a narrow win in the end, against the bottom-of-the-league team.

Our slow starts are giving cause for concern because against a better team we could have been out of the game by half time.

We tried to play it tight in the first half but we failed miserably with Barnsley having far too much room, O’Brien in particularly running the show for them.

In the second half we deserve credit for regaining control.

There is hope, there is promise of better times ahead but it is going to take time and who is going to replace the loan players who have been two of our better ones recently?

It’s the top of the league away next. Leicester here we come.