GRAEME Souness claimed the media had "made a bit of mischief" for him over his reported criticism of Wanderers "long ball tactics" when the two sides met at the Reebok earlier in the season.

Then Souness complained that Wanderers played an "in your face" type of football, used the long ball to put defences under constant pressure, and that Jay Jay Okocha must have had sore arms after constantly hurling long throw-ins into the Newcastle penalty area.

Yet after his side had gained their revenge with their win at St James's Park, Souness claimed it was more an observation rather than a criticism of Wanderers style of play.

"I think in the first game, Okocha had 19 long throws into the box, but I have to say that Sam Allardyce gets the most from the players he has got, and that's all you can ask of a manager.

"Those throws have led to them scoring some very important goals and I'm not criticising anyone for that. It's something we didn't deal with very well on that day. It was in your face, but today we had different personnel out there and I think we dealt with it a lot better.

"Sam deserves all the credit going for the squad he's got together and the position they find themselves in the table, and I'm not going to fall out with him over it, like some people have tried to suggest."

Even so, Souness could not hide his delight at his side's latest win, although he admitted the first half had not gone exactly to plan.

"We were slow to get out of the starting blocks. We managed to score a very good goal but it took us 45 minutes to get going.

"Titus Bramble then made his only mistake of the day when he was caught out of position and Bolton got a goal back but we managed to sort things out at half time. We'd had a hard UEFA Cup game on Thursday in difficult conditions and I think we needed 45 minutes to get that out of our system. When we did that we looked a good team. We pinned them in for most of the second half and really the goal coming was just a matter of time.

"With the pitch being difficult, I said we had to hit the front men quicker. We did that in the second half and it certainly suited Alan Shearer, who I think had his best game for me."

Souness also backed the referee when his players claimed Fernando Hierro should have been red-carded for a foul on Kieron Dyer.

He said: "Hierro found himself in a difficult situation, he had to make a split second decision, but he wasn't the last man and he wasn't in the box, so it wasn't a penalty and the ref got it right."

Souness then paid tribute to Dyer, a player who he has not always seen eye-to-eye with since succeeding Bobby Robson.

"My only criticism of Kieron is that he's not been getting enough goals from central midfield but he's started to put that right today. And he will get more goals from that position. He has all the attributes for it. He is very athletic, he floats across the ground. His feet hardly seem to touch the ground and so the box to box stuff is easy for him."