SAM Allardyce admitted Wanderers paid the price for playing attacking football, as they sank to a derby day defeat at the JJB Stadium.

The Whites were twice hit on the break, as goals from Henri Camara and Lee McCulloch cancelled out Radhi Jaidi's header, and condemned them to a first loss on their travels this campaign.

It has been a season in which the quality of football in the Premiership has been put under the microscope - but although Sunday's game ebbed and flowed with passion and pace, Bolton boss Allardyce was less than impressed.

He said: "I'd sooner be boring and winning than entertaining and losing.

"We have a defensive unit which has been very solid, and very difficult to break down. Sadly, that wasn't the case today.

"I think we attacked on more occasions than we normally would away from home. That has left too much space for the opposition to counter attack.

"We have paid the penalty for pushing and trying to get a goal, just so we would have something to hang on to."

Even though two defensive errors essentially lost Wanderers the game, Allardyce was quick to point out that his side had spurned a host of opportunities at the other end of the field.

He said: "In front of goal today we were very, very poor. We did make a magnificent comeback, but it wasn't quite enough to keep our unbeaten Premiership away record, and not enough to get the draw I think we deserved.

"We should have scored a lot sooner than we did, because when it finally arrived, we had left ourselves too much to do."

After their midweek win in Bulgaria, it was clear that some of the players involved against Lokomotiv Plovdiv were struggling to meet the pace of a frenetic derby encounter.

And Allardyce said he fears the defensive errors that crept into their game against Wigan - such as Bruno N'Gotty's inexcusable header into the path of Camara for the first goal - could be a result of Wanderers' congested fixture list.

He said: "Bruno would be the last person in the world you would expect to make such a basic error at such a crucial time. Maybe there is a little bit of fatigue in him, because he played 90 minutes over there, and then 90 minutes again today.

"Bruno, Tal and Henrik have played virtually every game this season because of the injury crisis we have got at the back, so maybe there might be a bit of fatigue creeping in."