Megson praise for Klasnic

Posted Sunday, October 25, 2009 by PA

Gary Megson praised the striking instincts of Ivan Klasnic after the Croatian hit a late winner to give Bolton a 3-2 victory over Everton.

Klasnic came off the bench to give Wanderers their first Barclays Premier League home win of the season when he rifled the ball past Tim Howard with three minutes remaining.

It was the 29-year-old's first goal in English football and Megson said he was not surprised to see him get off the mark.

"Ivan has just got one thought in his mind when he's in there," Megson said.

"He had a shot just before that from about 20 yards when really he should have passed it to Chung-Yong Lee.

"But you can't criticise forwards for doing that, that is what they are there for and him being that kind of personality was probably a good thing for us because he certainly wasn't looking to pass when the ball dropped to him. It was a fantastic strike."

Klasnic's rise to Premier League match-winner is all the more remarkable given that he underwent a kidney transplant in 2007, but Megson insists the focus should be on his qualities as a player.

"I can fully understand people talking about this - he has had this kidney transplant and he's come through," Megson said.

"But I think in time we'll move on from that and just recognise that he's a good player.

"He doesn't mention it at all. He doesn't have any fuss and he isn't treated any differently to anyone else, he just gets on with it."

Bolton had initially looked set to cruise towards their first league win at the Reebok Stadium since April when Lee and Gary Cahill gave them a 2-0 advantage after just 27 minutes but they then managed to throw the lead away, with Louis Saha and Marouane Fellaini drawing Everton level before Klasnic's late intervention.

Megson was delighted to see his team regain their composure and seal a victory he felt was long overdue, but warned his players that there were important lessons to be learned from the match.

"We'd been knocking on the door" Megson said.

"I don't know if we would have beaten Liverpool with a full complement of players but we were 2-1 up there and I think we should have beaten Tottenham.

"But should and could doesn't get you too far. Today you have seen the good side of us and the bad side of us.

"We should have been two goals up before we actually scored. Then we were two up, but we kept on playing the same way, without showing a little more patience and recognising that we are not going to be able to play like that for a full 90 minutes.

"It's too taxing, nobody can do that. It was a really good performance, a great result. We just need to recognise when to slow it down and when to speed it up again."

The result completed a bad week for David Moyes' depleted Everton squad, who were thrashed 5-0 in Benfica on Thursday night, but the manager felt his players had been unlucky under the circumstances.

"It was a long way to come from 2-0 down, but I thought we deserved to be back in it, that we had done enough," Moyes said.

"But we ran out of steam with about 20 minutes to go. We didn't really have the personnel to make changes, but we're not using that as an excuse - we should never have been 2-0 down, never have got ourselves into that situation.

"I just told them (at half-time) to go on and win the game - I thought that it was there for us.

"When we got it back to 2-1 I thought we were in the ascendancy for periods and I thought if we could do the same we would get another goal, which we did.

"But when it got to 2-2 we stepped off it and ran out of energy."