Coyle urges improvement

Football

Bolton gave as good as they got in the opening 45 minutes at The Reebok, but were outplayed after the interval.

The home side were on the back foot for much of the second half and finally succumbed to two late goals.

Coyle was particularly disappointed with his team collectively and insists things must improve if they are to climb the Premier League table.

Standard

"Take nothing away from Sunderland and how good they were in the second half," stated Coyle.

"We never got to the standard that we are capable of. In the first half we felt we did very well.

"Second half we know we never did enough collectively, we never passed and moved well enough.

"We never retained possession in forward areas. It kept coming back at us.

"The lads in defence certainly put in some brave blocks. There was a period of one corner after another.

Decisive

"We've lost the decisive goal from a corner that should have been cleared.

"Collectively in the second half we have to do better. We never did that today.

"Bizarrely enough when they scored we had two great chances to equalise and that has to be the same from the outset.

"We had a great record at the Reebok last year. We have to get back to that. Today was a chance to do that and we've let it pass us by.

"There's no doubt that's frustrating and disappointing. The bottom line is we need to perform better than what we did in the second half."