GARY Cahill admits he’s been having sleepless nights over Wanderers’ last two results - and now he’s expecting a few more.

The England centre-half got a shock earlier this week as his fiancee Gemma was rushed into hospital to gave birth to a baby daughter, Freya, four weeks before she was due.

Both mother and baby returned home safe and sound yesterday - but it all added to what had already been a pretty stressful week, as Cahill and the rest of Owen Coyle’s squad faced up to their heaviest home defeat in 15 years.

“We are all disappointed with how it went against United because we gifted them a lead and didn’t give ourselves a chance,” the defender said of the 5-0 loss at the Reebok . “We were way too open.

“If you give that sort of side space then you are going to get punished, and from my own point of view, against United and Liverpool it hasn’t just been the result that has been disappointing.

“I think we have let ourselves down and while it’s not every week you play against a side like that, but the good thing about football is there’s always that next game to put it right.”

Coyle has moved to shore up his side’s defensive frailties on the training pitch this week, paying special attention to team shape.

Cahill hopes the hard work will help to eliminate the holes that showed up with such alarming regularity against United and Liverpool in the last two games in particular.

“We’ve done some work on the training ground this week on defending without the ball and cutting out those individual mistakes,” he said.

“It hasn’t just been the back four, we’ve been doing that with the whole team.

“I think what’s happened over the last couple of games is that some players have been pressing the ball and others haven’t. That creates holes.

“You see teams at international level lose the ball and get back into position so quickly, so as not to lose their shape, and I think that’s what we have to strive to do.

“I get paid to defend and it’s not me shirking that responsibility but we do need to defend as a team and all go from the same gameplan.”

Cahill believes the influx of new players - eight recruited in the summer - has had a bearing on some of the shaky defending in recent weeks.

“We’ve had some fantastic players come in and everyone knows their job but I have worked under a few managers now and every one of them has a different mentality on how they want things done,” he said.

“Now we’ve had a chance to work together a bit more, we should be fine.

“But anyone can tell that going forward we’re better. We’ve improved vastly in that department and we’re creating a lot more chances.”

Further emphasis has been placed on getting a result against Norwich because of the two league games on the horizon, against Arsenal and Chelsea.

And Cahill admits it comes as somewhat of a relief not to be playing against one of the supposed elite clubs.

“No disrespect at all to Norwich but they do give us that chance to put things right,” he said.

“We know we’ve got some really tough games next month and there’s no point lying about it, we all looked at those first six weeks at the start of the season and thought ‘flipping heck’.

“We got off to a great start against QPR but no-one got carried away.

“If we nick something from Arsenal and Chelsea, that would be a big bonus, but I think everyone is looking at this game against Norwich as the one where we turn things around.”

With a new arrival now in tow, Cahill hopes his own preparations for the game will not be affected.

"Maybe I'll have to sneak off to sleep in the spare room," he told The Bolton News.