IGNORE what the current league table shows. The teams appear to be poles apart but Wanderers know they lost ground to Southampton in the fight for Premiership survival on Saturday.

They were also presented with their first serious challenge to their talent, character and resilience since they secured promotion at Cardiff in May.

How they respond will determine whether the bookies and the cynics were right all along or fundamentally misguided in writing off "Little Old Bolton".

The task is a daunting one with trips to Blackburn and Arsenal in the space of just four days but, just as they sensibly refused to get carried away with their sensational start to the season, Wanderers have no reason to beat themselves up after their first disappointment.

No one, least and most important of all the manager and his players, ever said it was going to be easy.

By their own admission they were mere pretenders at the top of the Premiership pile -- early pacemakers enjoying their moment of glory before the thoroughbreds got into their stride. And that is why they can contemptuously laugh off reports of their bubble having been burst by Marian Pahars' late Reebok strike.

"There never was a bubble," Sam Allardyce said after the little Latvian's matchwinner ended Southampton's 347-minute search for a Premiership goal. "In fact I don't know what a bubble's got to do with football."

Sure he was disappointed -- bitterly as he admitted -- but not because Wanderers lost their status as Premiership leaders to an Arsenal team that is one of the handful of genuine title contenders. This was a defeat that had nothing to do with Championship aspirations and everything to do with survival ambitions.

He just hopes it will not be a defeat he will live to regret on the day of relegation reckoning.

After Leicester, Middlesbrough, Liverpool and Leeds this was back to reality -- nothing more or less than Wanderers' expected when they set off on their Premiership adventure.

This was the sort of duel they knew would be the key to success or failure in their quest to succeed where they have twice failed before in establishing a beach-head in the Premiership.

Losing it was a severe blow but it has not made them any worse a side than they were when they stunned the football world by racking up those 10 precious points in their first four games.

On this evidence they are as good, if not better than Southampton, who finished 10th last season. Crucially, when the onus was on them to deliver, they struck out and, ironically, were given a dose of their own medicine -- falling to the classic counter-attack.

Whether flattered by the imitation or not, Big Sam was undone by a team playing the same system he has honed to near-perfection. Young Saints boss Stuart Gray came with a defined game plan -- five in midfield and with James Beattie in the lone striker's role Michael Ricketts plays so well.

Yet until the introduction of Pahars, Wanderers clearly had the upper hand. Gudni Bergsson and Mike Whitlow had young Beattie in check and Jussi Jaaskelainen was having another of those quiet afternoons he has grown accustomed to.

As the wind blew and the rain came down in torrents, there was not a lot going on in front of them, especially in a dour second half after Per Frandsen limped off with an ankle injury, but two shots against the Saints' woodwork illustrates the narrow margin of success and failure at any level, let alone the Premiership. Frandsen's loss had a major bearing on the outcome. As in every game to date, the Dane was inspirational and influential in the first half -- the game's most creative force and the man most likely to succeed. He was inches from putting Wanderers ahead on five minutes when he stranded Paul Jones with a quick free kick that bounced to safety off the foot of the post and had the Saints' keeper stretching to save a second.

He produced the pass of the game too when he dropped a 40-yarder just over Claus Lundekvam only to see Ricketts' touch let him down with only Jones to beat.

Wanderers were less of a force without him and, apart from Bo Hansen's shot that hit the post on 68 minutes, they rarely troubled a well-disciplined Southampton defence. Nevertheless, whatever the relieved Gray says about his side deserving their win, they would have been sitting on 11 points today, still unbeaten on top of the table, had they been more conservative and a shade less ambitious in the final quarter.

Wise after the event, yes, but had they maintained their form, their discipline and their organisation, they would never have allowed Wayne Bridge to make the surging run on the left that paved the way for Pahars to deliver the decisive blow.

"We forgot what we've been doing in the last few games," Simon Charlton admitted as he voiced his personal disappointment at failing to put one over on his former club.

"We were trying to win the game and got caught out. We left things a little bit open.

"We'd been compact before then but we gave them a lot of time and space. It was a bad goal for us.

"But they did exactly what we've done when we go away so I suppose we can take that as a bit of a compliment.

"They came for a 0-0 or at least to make it very tight.

"Maybe we were a little bit unprofessional but we're all learning lessons."