Harry Kewell admitted Kyle Jameson’s red card against Bolton “killed” his Oldham side.

Latics had started on the front foot but after Harry Clarke’s own goal, Jameson’s lunge on Nathan Delfouneso saw referee James Oldham produce a red card and give the hosts a mountain to climb.

Eoin Doyle made it 2-0 against his former club and while Kewell was pleased with his side’s resolve in the second half it is an 11th league defeat on home soil this season.

“I’m disappointed because I felt we started well,” said the Australian, whose side are 17th.

“They had a spell for a couple of minutes and then I felt we dominated the game for 15-20 minutes and had a couple of good chances.

“Serhat (Tasdemir) hits a good volley that if it doesn’t hit Bobby (Grant) it goes in. Then obviously we let a silly goal in and then the challenge killed us.

“But for me the way the players continued, the attitude, the way that they worked that second half to keep a clean sheet, supposedly against one of the better teams, I was proud of them.

“They worked hard, you could still see they were running and by the end I think they were running more than Bolton.

“I was proud of the second half performance and we’ve got to take the positives.”

On the red card itself, Kewell would not be drawn on the incident just before the half hour mark.

“It doesn’t really matter what our thoughts are, the referee made the decision and that’s it, we’ve got to move on,” he added.