GARY O’Neil hopes Wanderers can take another important step towards safety tonight.

Victory against Millwall at the weekend closed the gap to five points and – in O’Neil’s view – signalled to the sides above Bolton in the table that they are still up for the fight.

Looking towards a favourable run-in over the last 10 games, the experienced midfielder feels there is still plenty to play for.

“We’d played Swansea, Norwich and Leeds and knew that would be tough,” he said. “The way Millwall play probably suits us but Sheffield Wednesday are probably somewhere in between. They have spent a lot of money down the years and have some good players but from out point of view, we feel there’s something there for us. We can reel those sides above us back in.

“The Milwall game was massive. If they’d beaten us we would have been 11 behind them, 10 behind Reading, and it would have been a long way back.

“The character in the dressing room is fantastic. We won’t go down through a lack of effort or professionalism. It would be other things if we fall short.

“Sometimes it doesn’t look like it and you’ll play someone like Norwich and they’ll be passing it around you. Everyone shouts at you to get nearer but they are a good side who have stuff we haven’t.

“We try to make up for it with effort and organisation and hopefully, with a few more performances like this, it’ll be enough.”

Of his 31 career goals, spread over 19 years, O’Neil rates his solo strike against Millwall as one of the finest.

“I’m just surprised I managed to get that far with the ball,” he said. “When I realised I had a whole half to myself I just thought ‘ah, I’m going to look slow here.’

“I was trying to find someone to pass to, to be honest. I could see Will Buckley out of the corner of my eye but I couldn’t get it to him.

“I knew I wasn’t going to be quick enough to go straight to goal so I had to pretend to come in on my left foot. The guy who let me then let me go back on my right, so he obviously doesn’t know me because he’d know I’d never kick a ball with my left foot.

“Thankfully I managed to smack it in the corner. It was a blur and when I get the ball 60 yards from goal I don’t expect to score.”