LOKOMOTIV PLOVDIV 1, Wanderers 2 (Wanderers win 4-2 on aggregate): Sam Allardyce pinched himself as he woke up in his hotel room overlooking Sunny Beach on Friday morning - just to make sure it was not all a dream.

Wanderers, who, less than two decades ago, were playing Rochdale, Halifax Town and Exeter City in the bottom tier of the Football League, are about to go head to head with some of the high-rollers of European football.

When the draw is made for the group stages of the UEFA Cup in Switzerland next Tuesday, the Whites will take their place alongside the likes of Stuttgart, Monaco, Marseille, Hamburg, Roma and Red Star Belgrade - and Big Sam will finally consider that he has arrived in Europe.

Yet for 28 horrendous minutes on Thursday night, he thought he had dropped a king-sized clanger. He gambled, reckoning that a weakened team could finish off Lokomotiv Plovdiv, only to see his game plan shot to pieces.

Georgi Iliev's unstoppable 30-yard strike, six minutes into the second half, threatened to turn Wanderers' UEFA dream into a one-tie nightmare.

And Allardyce feared he was about to let down the people he most wanted to please - the fans who travelled to Bulgaria to witness their team's first venture into Europe.

Then he got lucky. Loko full-back, Alexander Tunchev, turned Henrik Pedersen's cross into his own net and Wanderers were back in business.

That would have been enough but Kevin Nolan put the cherry on the cake seven minutes later, hitting home a first-time shot from the edge of the box that put a gloss finish on a quality move featuring Pedersen and Kevin Davies.

"It was a massive gamble," Allardyce said, reflecting on his decision to make seven changes to the side that beat Portsmouth in the Premiership five days earlier and give four players - Ian Walker, Joey O'Brien, Fabrice Fernandes and Jared Borgetti - their first starts in Bolton colours.

"It would have been bitterly disappointing for everybody - for me, for the lads and for everybody at the club - had we been knocked out, but especially for those fans I bumped into on Sunny Beach earlier in the day, who had spent all their money to see their team play in Europe for the first time in their lives.

"The first pub we passed had about 60 Bolton fans inside, the next had about 160 and the third one must have had about 260 - and I started to wonder how many were going to turn up. There must have been 3,000 inside the ground, judging by the noise they were making.

"It's no wonder I couldn't sleep yesterday afternoon. I tried to get half an hour but I couldn't because I was so worried about it.

"I was worried we wouldn't do it for those fans because we'd made so many changes and it would have been my fault. But I had to be professional and I couldn't let my heart rule my head."

For while his heart was telling him he should pick his strongest side to ensure there were no slip-ups against the Bulgarians, having had to come from behind to win the first leg 2-1 with virtually the last kick of the game, his head reminded him that Sunday's Premiership game at Wigan was of higher priority.

He still thought he had picked a team strong enough to win the tie and, without playing well, they looked reasonably comfortable at half time, drawing 0-0 and still ahead on aggregate

Then Iliev struck and it all looked so desperately disappointing. Wanderers were being taught a European lesson by the unfancied Bulgarians who, because their own ground doesn't come up to UEFA standards, had had to travel 200 miles to play their home leg at the Naftex Stadium in Burgas on the Black Sea coast.

The 10,000 who had made the journey from Plovdiv might well have gone home celebrating a famous victory had referee Jouni Hyytia not been sharp enough to spot that Tal Ben Haim's foul on Metodi Stoynev was six inches outside rather than inside the penalty box, as the Loko players claimed so convincingly. But, in the end, it was Allardyce's substitutions that won the day.

With no option but to make a positive response, he sent on Nolan, Davies and Hidetoshi Nakata - and suddenly it was a different game.

"With hindsight, conceding the goal was probably the best thing that happened to us," the manager said. "It got us on the front foot.

"We hadn't created very much at all because we were so frightened about the slender lead and we wanted to protect it, but the bigger players came off the bench and made a big contribution for us."

Nolan, who was again disappointed not to be in the starting line-up, reckons the Wanderers boss earned his lucky break.

"I think he's got the magic touch as well as being lucky," he said. "It's a bit of luck, yes, but it's having the bottle to do it at the right time.

"And he's got that."