Wanderers 1, Everton 2: STRAIGHT-TALKING Sam Allardyce voiced the fears that are haunting worried Wanderers fans today when he admitted the team is in big relegation trouble.

Allardyce has a reputation for telling it like it is and sees no reason to ignore the obvious; 21 points from 25 games adds up to relegation.

Regardless of what the other struggling teams are up to, Wanderers know that if they cannot harvest a crop of safety points from somewhere soon, their hopes of qualifying for a third successive season of Premiership football will be doomed.

"It means nothing what the teams down below us are doing," he insisted as he dismissed as "no consolation" news of Sunderland's defeat at Southampton.

"The big problem lies with ourselves. Irrespective of the position in the league, whether we are out of the bottom three or in the bottom three, we're four points adrift of getting at least a point a game and that's relegation stuff. You don't have to be a mathematician or a genius to work it out."

The nightmare scenario is not a direct consequence of last night's demoralising defeat by Everton. Wanderers have been contributing to their own downfall throughout a season of missed chances and squandered opportunities.

But the hapless performance, summed up by the manager's verdict "we got exactly what we deserved - absolutely nothing", served to ram home the gravity of the situation as it stands.

Wanderers need a marked improvement if they are to mount a successful survival mission and there were precious few signs here that they are capable of doing it.

Saturday's home game against Birmingham now becomes a "must-win" game like none before it.

Gudni Bergsson's scrambled goal in the second minute of overtime gave last night's scoreline a rather flattering look to it from the home standpoint. In reality Everton were comfortably the better side and can surely not have picked up an easier three points.

They won it with two goals from full-back turned midfielder Steve Watson in the space of six first-half minutes. The first - a spectacularly-executed volley - was a strike no defence could have legislated for but the second - a follow-up after Jussi Jaaskelainen had parried Gary Naysmith's shot - was the result of seriously sloppy defending of an Alessandro Pistone free-kick.

Yet again Wanderers paid a high price for failing to convert their own scoring chances.

Not as plentiful as on other occasions but there in the shape of Michael Ricketts missing the target with a first minute header then both Ivan Campo and Henrik Pedersen missing as they tried to turn Youri Djorkaeff free-kick's into scoring opportunities. Having seen his players perform so impressively for no reward at Newcastle six days earlier, the manager was looking for more reasons to be cheerful.

But there were none to be found as Everton delighted in achieving their first target of the season - 42 points means they can forget any relegation worries - and looked confidently towards the next - European qualification.

Campo - so impressively dominant at St James' Park - was unable to provide anything like the same degree of influence in midfield, while Ricketts, whose presence in the starting line-up suggested a pre-deadline transfer is looking highly unlikely, was starved of anything like the service he needs to make his presence felt.

For the Wanderers fans it was a painful experience. In a match of such importance they had good reason to expect more, if not in terms of pattern and free-flowing football but at least with a display of passion and purpose.

Both were missing. Watson's double strike, right out of the blue, stunned the Bolton players after their bright start. What shocked the supporters was the apparent lack of urgency in their team's response.

Kevin Nolan, sent on as a second half substitute, might have tested Everton's character if he had been on target with a close range header around the hour mark but Bergsson's strike, after Per Frandsen's shot was blocked in a goalmouth melee, and the flurry of activity that followed came too little too late to have any bearing on the result.

"We have to take it on the chin," Allardyce acknowledged, "and accept that sometimes the players in the squad we've got can't cope ... and they haven't coped with a very organised, very strong and very skilful Everton side that managed to put the ball in the net when the opportunity came their way.

"But basically we failed to produce anything like what we are capable of."