THE last time Sam Ricketts was involved in a survival scrap, he was serenaded by Phil Brown on the pitch after the final match.

This time he hopes he will not be hearing Stoke City’s anthem, Delilah, after Sunday’s last game, as the sound of silence will mean Wanderers’ relegation fight has ended on the right note.

Ricketts was part of the Hull City side that survived on the final day of the 2009 season at Newcastle United’s expense, despite a 1-0 defeat at home to Manchester United.

There will be no such luxury at the Britannia Stadium this weekend, however, with nothing but victory good enough to save the Whites – who must also rely on Manchester City beating QPR at the Etihad Stadium.

Ricketts insists that Owen Coyle has enough players capable of handling the pressure of the occasion.

“There has been pressure for a while now, but if we hadn’t carved out the results we have recently, we’d be down already,” he told The Bolton News. “But that pressure applies to everyone.

“We were lucky enough at Hull to have stayed up on that last game of the season. And it’s an amazing feeling.

“It’s very similar fighting relegation to going for promotion – those one-off games where everything means so much. It all rests on the one game.

“Everyone is focused, everyone has put their life on hold. Speaking personally, the last few months since I came back from injury has all been building towards this. Your life revolves around football and it has all culminated in the next two games.”

Even though safety, were it to be achieved, would be celebrated across the town on Sunday evening – not least at the club’s Player of the Year Awards at the Reebok, Ricketts admits the campaign has been a disappointment.

“It’s not a success, considering how well we did last year,” he said. “But it would be a massive disappointment to everyone at the club if we weren’t in the Premier League next year.

“The players, the club all want to be up there, and flirting with relegation wasn’t in the plan at the start of the year. But it has happened and we have to deal with it. We need to get out of trouble and then, hopefully, come back stronger next year.”

But as a player who has plied his trade at every level from the Conference up, Ricketts cannot understand anyone who subscribes to the theory that Wanderers would actually benefit from relegation, or a spell of rebuilding in the Championship.

“This is where you want to be as a player and I’m sure the majority of fans would say the same,” he said.

“I can understand when people say it’s better to go down and then come back stronger but then you think of those Bolton fans who waited so long for the club to get in the Premier League and stay there – and we have been here for a good few years – you don’t want to relinquish that lightly.

“It’s the same as a player, you don’t want to let it go because this is the place you want to be.

“The Premier League is known all around the world, everyone has heard of it. With the greatest of respect, when you mention the Championship, you’ve lost three quarters of the population right there. No-one knows what you are talking about.”