Alex Revell admitted Stevenage could not afford to make the mistakes they did against a side with Bolton’s quality in a 4-1 defeat.
The Trotters raced into a 2-0 lead after 16 minutes thanks to goals from Ricardo Santos and John McAtee.
They added a third through Victor Adeboyejo and although Dan Kemp pulled one back for the hosts with 20 minutes to go, Dion Charles wrapped it up with a fourth two minutes from time.
Revell said: “If you make mistakes, you get punished against good teams and we had a 15-minute spell in the first half where they showed their quality and caused us problems.
“Two set-pieces and if you don’t do your job at a set-piece, if you don’t mark or you give players time in the box, they score goals.
“We came in at half-time and we sussed out what we had to do and then we started to show stuff on the ball.
“But even then, there were too many turnovers and we kept giving the ball away.
“When you play a team like this, they break on you at pace. They’ve got good players in certain areas and they punish you.”
Boro have prided themselves on their ability with free-kicks and corners at both ends of the pitch so to concede two in three first-half minutes was tough to take.
“Set-pieces have caused us an issue because of some of the players we’ve lost [through injury] and the size of the team is smaller,” said Revell, whose team lost a third game in succession after 2-0 defeats to Cambridge and Rotherham.
“It’s hurt us because we’re normally so strong from those positions but even with the players that we’ve got, you’ve got to do your job or you’ll get punished.
“We got punished again for the third goal, it’s a mistake, an air swing, and it goes straight to the lad with goal in front of him.
“And then for the fourth, Taye [Ashby-Hammond] should save it for sure.
“It’s been a tough week in terms of results.”
On the other side of the coin, Bolton manager Ian Evatt had a simple answer when asked for the most pleasing part of the evening.
“All of it,” he said. “There wasn’t a great deal wrong with any of it.
“We started the game so well and some of our play was excellent.
“We were brave, playing through our ‘sixes’, playing into the ’10s’, which we knew would cause them problems because they were in those half-spaces which ask defenders questions and makes them uncomfortable.
“We probed and asked questions and scoring from two set-plays against a physically dominant team is important.
“And I thought we dealt with their pressure really well and I thought we defended the box exceptionally well.
“I thought it was an exceptional away performance.”
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