Boss Excited By Midfield Pairing

By Mark Heys
September 28 2005

Wanderers boss Sam Allardyce is looking forward to seeing more of Jay-Jay Okocha and Hidetoshi Nakata in the Bolton first team following the latter's excellent performance during Saturday's win over Portsmouth.

Nakata put in an encouraging and exciting performance in his first full Premiership start since arriving on loan from Fiorentina last month and Allardyce is confident that he has found another creative player with similar abilities to Trotters skipper Okocha.

"It looks like we've found a player (Nakata) with cutting edge qualities and with the passing ability of Jay Jay, To have the two of them together performing in the same side is going to be really something.

Allardyce admits that Okocha has been a shadow of his former self in recent games but the Bolton manager is highly confident that the Nigerian will hit top form again soon.

"Jay Jay is not quite as good as we know he can be at the moment, but when he does get up to speed and does start showing his skills, these two are going to be awesome for us."

Both players are expected to play a major part in the Wanderers UEFA Cup second leg match against Lokomotiv Plovdiv tommorow afternoon as the Lancashire side look to build on their impressive 2-1 victory in the first leg.