JOHN Gregory accepted his share of the blame for letting Wanderers almost wriggle off the hook at Villa Park.

With Leeds and Arsenal dropping points, Villa became the fifth team to lead the Premiership this season. But, having come from behind to lead 3-1, they had to withstand a fighting finish and were lucky when Gudni Bergsson missed a late chance to snatch an equaliser.

And Gregory conceded that the double substitution of his two goalscorers - Juan Pablo Angel and Darius Vassell - three minutes before Michael Ricketts pulled it back to 3-2 was a contributory factor.

"As always with substitutions you can get them horribly wrong and sometimes you get them spot on," he acknowledged, "and this time I suppose I could be blamed for letting Bolton back into the game."

Gregory, who sent on Paul Merson and Dion Dublin when he thought the game was safe, came in for most criticism for taking off fans' favourite Angel when he was on a hat-trick but defended his decision on the grounds that the Colombian cannot last the Premiership pace.

"They (the fans) have adopted Juan very much as their hero and sometimes when they see their favourite player leaving the pitch they don't like it," he said in response to the chorus of boos as Angel was replaced.

"But I have to be bold enough and brave enough to put my faith in players who maybe haven't played for a couple of weeks, hoping there will be a seamless transition. There's no good having 22 players when you only use 11 all the time.

We were very tired ... I tend not to use excuses but the legs were tiring in those last 15 minutes or so. We'd played on Wednesday and Bolton were pretty fresh from an amazing victory at Old Trafford last week.

"There's no excuses for giving the ball to the opposition but we hung on in there."

Gregory is playing down the fact that Villa have hit top spot, having been there before - three years ago - and knowing the pitfalls.

"I suppose it is really down to one or two of the other teams allowing us to sneak in ahead of them. Now the difficult bit is to try and stay in those top four positions and that's going to be exceptionally difficult.

"I've been here before and I know how it is. I know what comes with it. Inwardly I'm very excited about what we've achieved but we've only played 10 games and now with this comes the expectation of staying there."

The Villa boss has no intention of resting on his laurels. He wants Leicester midfielder Muzzy Izzett and is hoping chairman, Doug Ellis will give him the cash to strengthen as he chases a Champions League slot.

"My own biggest criticism of myself last time was that I didn't jump up and down hard enough and make sure I added to the squad," he recalled.

"Consequently we got a couple of injuries and our season petered out without me putting pressure on the players who were in possession of the shirts by making some additions. I certainly won't make the same mistakes this time."