WITH one playmaker limping around 10,000 miles away in Canberra and three more in the treatment room it’s no wonder Wanderers are lacking a spark.

Neil Lennon’s side have not lacked in effort from the moment he walked through the doors at the Macron Stadium but the Whites boss admits he is missing someone who would make a difference in a tight affair such as the one against Leeds.

Eidur Gudjohnsen opened his account in a second spell at Bolton from the penalty spot and showed some classy touches but it is asking a lot of the 36-year-old Icelander to carry the team for the rest of the campaign.

Likewise youngster Zach Clough – sensational on his debut against Wigan Athletic in the FA Cup but cruelly denied a league debut because of a hamstring injury.

Can Wanderers really expect a 19-year-old to carve a path through the Championship towards the play-offs?

With Chung-Yong Lee looking increasingly likely to be sold despite picking up a knock in his first Asia Cup game for South Korea and both Mark Davies and Max Clayton ruled out with longer term injuries, Lennon admits effort alone might not be enough to maintain the progress shown since his arrival.

“Our options are limited in a sense,” he told The Bolton News. “We’re just missing that spark in the final third and that’s no disrespect to the players out there at the minute. If you look at the quality we have lost then eventually it’s going to bite you.

“We need to start picking up wins now if we want to forge any way forward. We’ve just hit a buffer because of the lack of creative players in this team.

“We will score – there’s no question in that – but I just feel we’re lacking in some areas.”

Certainly, one of the players linked most often with Lennon, his former Celtic charge Kris Commons, would tick the creativity box quite nicely.

But the Wanderers boss claims he has missed out on a couple of attacking players, not least Chelsea wonderkid Lewis Baker, who will be wearing the blue and white of Sheffield Wednesday when the two sides meet at Hillsborough next weekend.

“We had him in, couldn’t get the deal done and he was off to Sheffield Wednesday,” he said. “It was unfortunate but then there have been a lot of deals like that.”

Lennon played Gudjohnsen and Emile Heskey – 37 yesterday – together up front, using the added mobility of Liam Feeney around them to try and cause Leeds problems.

“I didn’t want Eidur or Emile to go the 90 minutes but unfortunately that has been the case,” he said. “We needed them on the pitch because we weren’t functioning.

“Going forward we weren’t great, and defensively and in midfield there wasn’t enough quality about us.

“It’s a bad day but not the worst, at least we’ve come away with something.”