DESPITE the horrendous, diversion-strewn journey back from Birmingham on Tuesday night, we arrived home in a state of euphoria, having watched a gutsy, battling performance bring home the three points.

Our Doombar deliberations were decidedly more upbeat than they have been for a long time and the general thoughts were if we could roll our sleeves up like we did at St Andrew's, we could have something to sing about against the top-of-the-league Canaries.

We had run them close in December and Preston had done a job on them last week.

Phil Parkinson was forced to make a couple of changes, with Luke Murphy and Josh Vela coming in for Gary O’Neill and Marc Wilson.

He stuck with two up front and we looked up for it at the start.

But Norwich showed why they are top, and us why we are nearly bottom, as they tore us apart in the first half.

They looked like scoring every time they went forward.

This could easily have been a cricket score and the only reason it wasn’t was because of a man-of-the-match performance from ex-Norwich goalkeeper, Remi Matthews.

Norwich were easily the best team to come to the Unibol this season.

Teemu Pukki must be the best free signing in the Championship. He’s scored more goals than the entire Bolton team this season.

So, were Norwich that good or were we that bad?

It was a combination of both. You are not going to get anything from a top team if you are not at your best.

We did marginally better in the second half and one note of encouragement was the return from injury of Joe Williams who made a difference.

We are still facing BWExit without a deal.

I believe talks are ongoing behind the scenes, but any takeover is unlikely to significantly affect anything on the pitch this season.

We have to go with what we have got.

If we got anything at Leeds and Swansea it would be a bonus, but then we have a run of six matches where I would expect to pick up some serious points if we are to have a chance at survival this season.

Of course, we have to give it a go in all matches.

It’s going to be tough, it's going to be close again, but we can still do this together.