Fleetwood boss Adam's verdict on late defeat and Bolton 'quality'

Fleetwood boss Charlie Adam was gutted to lose against Wanderers at the death but took plenty of encouragement from his side's second-half display.

Ryan Graydon had cancelled out Aaron Collins’ opener but the Welshman struck again in stoppage time to ensure the Whites topped the group, sending the visitors out of the competition.

“(We are disappointed) with the outcome but the performance, no,” Adam told the club channels.

“To come to a place like this, with structure and organisation. I know they scored two goals but I didn’t think they created that much apart from that.

“We had some big chances second half and our performance levels went up, we believed in ourselves a bit more and caused them a few problems. We now have to take that into the league.”

The head coach added: “We said that we could come here and have belief that we have players in this team who can hurt the opposition, and we managed to do that second half.

“Overall, we are disappointed to go out of the tournament but the way we played, second half, we have to take that into the rest of the season.”

Fleetwood came out strongly after the break, and Adam is optimistic that positive results are around the corner if they can replicate those performance levels in the league.

“The energy and enthusiasm of the lads was very good,” he explained. “They deserved to at least get to penalties and see where we were at, but a moment in the 92nd minute cost us.

“We asked the lads, when it goes over, to squeeze the box and we did that. Unfortunately, somebody switches off at the back post and they have got quality players, we get punished with that.

“He is stood free in the box, initially he is offside but second phase of play, we don’t defend it well enough and lose the goal.

“Coming here to a 20-odd thousand seater stadium, I know there weren’t that many people here but it is an experience for our boys to come and play at this level.

“Collins, Lolos, they have quality players within the group, Matete I thought was really good for them.

“That is the challenge for us and we have to go and show that on a weekly basis now in the league. If we put in performances like that, we will win more games.”