By Mark Heys
August 30 2005

The first month of the new Premiership season has certainly proved to be an encouraging and eventful one as we begin our quest to improve on last years impressive form. We should have taken much more from the Aston Villa and Everton games than we did, but the last two games against Newcastle United and West Ham United cancelled out the disappointments of those first two matches.

A wrong call of offside against Kevin Nolan was all the difference between one point and three at Villa, whilst a hatful of missed chances at Everton came back to haunt us in our first league game of the new season at the Reebok.

Had things been different then we could have well been looking at a completely untarnished start to the season and sitting pretty at the top of the table alongside big spending Chelsea.

Still, a fifth placed position in the Premiership and seven points on the board is not to be grumbled at especially as we could be worse off in the sense that we could be sitting in the bottom three.

Meanwhile, the UEFA Cup draw was made last week giving Bolton their first ever European test against Lokomotiv Plovdiv of Bulgaria. Like many people, I haven't heard of them before up until now but we should not take them too lightly otherwise we may end up out of the competition before we even dust down our passports, you only need to look at Celtic earlier on this season to see that it can happen so a focused attitude is what is needed.

Another piece of good news was the end to the Stelios Giannakopoulos transfer saga which was getting to be like a stuck record. He ended last season in fantastic form and has done well so far this season so a new contract for him is a huge weight off everyone's minds including Sam Allardyce, who at one point did not know himself whether or not to include the popular Greek in his long term plans.

The reception Stelios received from our fans when scoring the winner against Newcastle just proves how much he is valued at Bolton and I for one am looking forward to him being a key part in our league and cup plans.

Henrik Pedersen and Abdoulaye Diagne-Faye also made an impression in the Newcastle game following last minute injuries to defensive pair Ricardo Gardner and Radhi Jaidi.

Like many others, I was wary of Henrik going back into the defence and out of position but he performed admirably against a team renound for their attacking play. New boy Faye had a solid and professional debut as a substitute for Jaidi and it will be nice to see much more of him as the season develops.

We now have a short break due to international week but im sure the lads will be more than fired up for our next game which is a local derby against Lancashire neighbours Blackburn.