Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Owen Coyle: Bolton can shock Chelsea

Bolton's manager Owen Coyle believes his present crop of players have
what it takes to deliver a killer-punch to the blues title ambition.

The gaffer implored his team to take heart from Portmouth's FA Cup
semi-final win over Tottenham on Sunday by giving a whole-hearted
performance today at Stamford Bridge: "Nobody gave Portmouth a chance
yesterday after what they had been through, but that is always an
opportunity to go and produce a result and that is what we will look
to do," the former Burnley boss declared.

"We need to work our socks off for each other and show quality on the
ball when we get it.
There is no doubt that this is the toughest game that you can pick.
Chelsea are in great form and are the Champions elect in many people's
eyes and with Manchester United drawing yesterday (Sunday) that has
handed them another incentive."

The title race has taken a new twist all thanks to Big Sam and his
Blackburn warriors, hopefully Coyle's team will hand us another life-line by
derailing Chelsea's progress today.
The Bolton boss believes it is an advantage to be labelled an underdog
and charged his lads to be spurred by that fact: "But the nature of
football is that when you are at your best you can win any given game,
and that is how we will treat it. We recognise that we are playing
against a top quality team with world-class players but these are the
type of games you want to enter into.

"People forget that seven games we were in the bottom three but we
played very well and won games and by doing that we took ourselves
away from that dangerous position."

Coyle concluded by saying: "Our short term aim is to make sure that we
stay in the Premier League and that is what we intend to do.
We've got five games to go and we will do everything we can to get the
points that make us safe because it is in our hands."