PHIL Parkinson has pledged to conduct a thorough investigation into Wanderers’ abject home display against Birmingham City.

The Whites return to training at Lostock this morning still smarting from a defeat which left them placed precariously above the relegation zone with six games to play.

Parkinson’s side still have a five-point advantage over Barnsley, who also hold a game in hand, but now face a difficult double-header against play-off chasing Derby County and Millwall.

Bolton have not won at Derby in 37 years, spanning back to the old Baseball Ground days, but the Wanderers boss hinted it could be a much-changed side which takes the field against the Rams on Saturday.

“I need to have a long, hard think about the team we put out there,” he told The Bolton News. “We have had some better results, better performances, away from home recently – and I still feel there were good elements to the Leeds game.

“But we are obviously disappointed with the result against Birmingham and we’ll need to have a good look at the options we’ve got available to us now, make sure we’re right, before picking a team which gives us the best possible chance of getting a result.”

Wanderers will be without Jan Kirchhoff at Derby, with the German midfielder picking up an injury just five minutes after replacing Karl Henry on Tuesday night.

Parkinson says the blow negated the man advantage held by the Whites after Birmingham’s Che Adams had been sent off.

“It was frustrating because we were worried about Karl’s hamstring anyway but when we put Jan on to give us that bit of quality on the ball he pulled his hamstring – literally five minutes,” he said.

“Maybe we should have brought him off, then everyone would have realised what was happening.

“He felt he was alright just to stand up front – but we’d lost the shape with Noone and Clough coming in off the shape, which is what we’d wanted.

“We needed a bit of quality on the ball, which Jan has, and we had it for a few minutes but then it went away from us.”