Saturday Mar 22 2008 14:19
Bolton Wanderers manager Gary Megson has refused to use the January exit of star striker Nicolas Anelka as an excuse for his side's drop back into the Premier League relegation zone.
The France forward netted 11 goals for the Trotters during the first half of the season, before leaving for Chelsea in a £15million deal in early January.
Since then Bolton have scored just five times in nine league games, but Megson has refused to blame Anelka's exit for those struggles.
He said: "Everybody's now saying that if we'd have kept him then we'd have done this or that.
"But when I arrived I think Nic had scored five or six goals and we were bottom of the table by one point from Derby, so it doesn't follow that if he'd stayed then we'd have done differently.
"We had no choice, Nic wanted to go and join Chelsea, which we fully understood.
"This club has never scored lots of goals, but I do accept that we don't score enough goals at the moment to get ourselves out of the trouble that we're in.
"It's not something that we hope changes, it's got to change."
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