PAUL STURROCK felt Saints paid the price for being negative on Saturday.

After taking the lead through Marian Pahars, the Saints boss felt his side sat back on their advantage in the second-half as they were punished by two goals in the space of a minute.

He said: "It is a very dangerous game to sit at 1-0 and expect the other team not to score.

"We sauntered through the second-half waiting for time to run down and the sucker punches came.

"I don't think there is any way we should be using excuses about substitutions and penalty decisions or whatever.

"Our second-half performance did not merit us winning the game. It's something to learn from.

"Bolton are the type of team who you have to be on your toes against for all the set-pieces because they have got good players and good execution of throw-ins and free-kicks."

He added: "Our mental approach was poor. We have had three away games and we played on the back foot as you have to sometimes away from home.

"We have come back with good results, but you have to at times change your psyche from being defensive to offensive, and I didn't think enough of them came to the show as far as being offensive was concerned."

The Bolton goals from Kevin Nolan and Kevin Davies were both somewhat disappointing defensively, particularly the first.

"If you look through the two goals, I'll have a quiet word with those involved and hopefully they will appreciate their mistakes have cost us goals," said Sturrock.

"We never stamped out the danger of Bolton and it has cost us.

"I don't feel we flowed and passed the ball enough which caused us concern which meant we kept losing the ball going up to the front players.

"Any time we put a few passes together we looked a threat."

Saints lost Graeme Le Saux in the first-half with a hamstring problem, while Rory Delap was also forced off just after the interval.

Sturrock is now hopeful central defender Michael Svensson will return from his knee injury this week.

He said: "Michael should be ready for next Saturday, but we said that last week.

"He's got bruising of the bone and at the end of the day he is very professional and he's the type of lad who wants to be ready before he plays.

"We could do with him, because he gives us that steelyness which might have helped with Davies' performance in the second-half.

"I'm bitterly disappointed for Le Saux because we had to change the shape of the team and I was looking forward to having that back four play - but that's football.

"He has the identical hamstring as he came off against Liverpool. It took Graeme a while last time so there is no point rushing him back now.

"Rory took a knock on his leg, he complained about it at half-time and you could see he couldn't run when he came out.

"That didn't help because Rory and (Yoann) Folly had been putting a run together."

Of Pahars' midfield contribution, which included an excellent finish for his goal, as well as a poor challenge in the build-up to Bolton's equaliser, Sturrock added: "We are trying to put Marian in a shape, he will be first to admit he should have done better for their goal.

"But it is a learning curve for him."