DAVID Pleat admits that Tottenham's failure to handle Kevin Davies had left them facing a relegation dogfight.

The Spurs boss had hoped his defenders would stand firm against the "aerial bombardment" he predicted Wanderers would launch in the first phase of Saturday's Reebok clash.

But Ivan Campo wrecked that plan when he scored after just seven minutes and, when Henrik Pedersen secured the points with a second on 65 minutes, the Londoners were nervously looking over their shoulders at the drop zone.

"We have to believe now that we are in a dogfight," Pleat said. "We're on a poor run and we can't get an away result. We've got into a slide."

Pleat admitted: "Bolton had more experience than us and they had more physical power. They seemed to win a hell of a lot of free kicks -- in fact I'd like to know what the free kick count was. Whenever we did get our passing going the game seemed to be interrupted by a free kick. We might have given away as many as them but it always appears, when you are the away team, that the other team gets more free kicks.

"But Sam's got a good tactic and it's done well for him. They launched the ball in there for Davies and they put a lot of pressure on us.

"I felt we needed to get through the first 20 minutes against an aerial bombardment -- I think that's fair to say -- but we didn't get through it safely because we lost the goal.

"We responded in the second half but we had a hell of a lot to regain and our final ball just wasn't of a good enough quality. We can analyse it as much as we want but, in the end, they were two very bad mistakes that cost us the game."

Pleat, who has been in charge of team affairs at White Hart Lane in a caretaker capacity since the departure of Glenn Hoddle in October, is hoping to keep spirits high in the dressing room but admits he has a tough job.

"It's always the same when you lose a few games." he said. "You're only as strong as your weakest link, so I've told them they must stick together and not blame each other. It's a collective, it's 'we' ... I'm part of it, the coaches are part of it and we have to stick together. A good win can help us a lot but we've had a poor run and we're responsible for that poor run.

"We have to hold our hands up."