Steven Schumacher rues lack of confidence as Bolton suffer defeat at Cardiff

Bolton boss Steven Schumacher rued a lack of confidence after watching his side suffer a 2-0 League One defeat to promotion-rivals Cardiff at Cardiff City Stadium.

Two goals in the space of two minutes at the start of the second half from Omari Kellyman and Chris Willock saw Cardiff return to winning ways and took them 11 points clear of Bolton in the battle for the second automatic promotion place.

Having held the Bluebirds in a first half that saw them fire off 13 shots, win five corners, hit the woodwork and bring two great saves out of Jack Bonham, Schumacher had a simple message for his players.

“I told them to take the handbrake off – I didn’t know what we were waiting for, maybe for them to score the first goal. I told them there was nothing to lose and to go for it,” said Schumacher.

“But their individuals were miles better than ours. They played with confidence, but we didn’t have any.

“Sometimes you get a bad day, but there haven’t been many this season when I’ve had to say we were well beaten in all departments. Peterborough away was the only other time – that’s twice in 42 games.

“We were comprehensively beaten by a better team and that’s our chance of automatic promotion gone, although there is still a lot to play for.

“We said before the game, we would have to be the best version of ourselves to get a result down here and I don’t think we got that.

“We lacked any sort of belief – certainly in the first 45 minutes – and we didn’t have any courage to take the ball.”

Cardiff can now join Lincoln in being promoted back to the Championship if they can win away at Huddersfield on Tuesday night and Reading on Saturday after picking up their first win in four games at home.

“Before today’s game there would have been question marks about our form, about where we were at, about how many wins we’d had in the last eight games,” admitted Cardiff boss Brian Barry-Murphy.

“We had to accept all that and we did – we took it on the chin and still played the way we played in spite of that.

“Now we have to try to repeat that on Tuesday night. If we do, then we’ll give Huddersfield a good game.

“I couldn’t have been happier with the intent the players showed throughout the first half and the main focus of half-time was to make sure that we could reassert our dominance.

“We did that and scored the goals at important times.

“That reflected our dominance, which we probably haven’t done in the recent past. It was a big help for us to win as convincingly as we did against a team as strong as Bolton.

“In previous weeks our performances were giving us the chance to win a game like today, but we hadn’t done it.

“We had to go and do it today and we did. Now we have to quickly recover and go again on Tuesday.”