Clear blue skies and a mysterious white ball shining down, meant a perfect day for an outing to the seaside, for the second part of our away trilogy. The first part had gone rather well with three points and free pints at Cambridge.

The day started well with the mandatory fish and chips at Blackpool and hopes were genuinely high of getting something out of this match, despite the Seasiders' impressive home form of late.

Ricardo Santos and George Thomasson were back for the Wanderers to further boost our hopes. What could go wrong?

Indeed, we got off to the perfect start with Thomasson putting us one up in the eighth minute. But then we fell apart.

Blackpool caught us napping after a soft free kick, to equalise minutes later and repeated the punishment minutes later to go in front.

We were creating chances but crucially missing them, while our defence was having a nightmare against their attack.

The match turned against us when the referee unbelievably awarded a penalty and red card for Ricardo Santos after a last-ditch tackle on the goal line.

If it was a foul, then the current law says a caution is the punishment as long as a genuine attempt to play the ball is made. Blackpool wrapped things up with a fourth goal to give us our worst away result for ages. Many Bolton fans headed for an early exit.

Call it what you want. Make whatever excuses you can. But nothing will change the fact that we were well beaten by a better team on the day. Defensively we were very poor with our defensive midfield nowhere.

But these things are sent to try us. We win as a team. We lose as a team, players and fans alike. We need to learn whatever lessons we can from this mauling, then park it because we cannot change it.

Every match will be tough now, as it will be for our fellow promotion challengers.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going and we have got to make sure that we are tough enough to get that automatic promotion place. We fans will do what we can off the pitch. It is up to the players and management on the pitch.