Gary Megson needed no reminding of how poorly his team had performed against Wigan Athletic at the JJB Stadium on Sunday, but as the Bolton Wanderers manager prepared to board the coach for the short journey home the howls of derision from supporters rang loud and clear.

Megson had described the 1-0 defeat by a Wigan team who played for all but five minutes of the match with ten men, after Jason Koumas’s sending-off, as the “worst” performance he had witnessed from a side he had managed and the fans were not about to argue.

“When I came to get on the bus there was one supporter using the word unacceptable, but we’re not kidding ourselves,” Megson said. “We were using the same word. We know it was unacceptable and the players know that, but what it has done is galvanise them to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“We’ve got to make sure we get as many points as we can from these last nine games to get out of the trouble we’re in.”

After a run of four successive league defeats that have left his team two points adrift of safety, the last team Megson would have wanted to face this evening are Manchester United at Old Trafford. But while under normal circumstances the manager may be tempted to discount such a game, Bolton’s situation is so perilous that they could do with springing the kind of surprise they managed at the Reebok Stadium in November, when they beat United 1-0.

With only one home match against a team presently in the bottom half of the table left and with Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur to play, Bolton have the hardest run-in of any of the relegation-threatened clubs. If that was not enough to contend with, Megson’s troubles mounted yesterday with the news that Kevin Nolan and Gary Cahill, two of the manager’s most trusted lieutenants, will probably be missing against United because of injury, in addition to Jussi Jaaskelainen, the goalkeeper, who has been ruled out for the remainder of the season with a back problem.

Nolan, the captain, has a back problem, while Cahill suffered a severely swollen ankle against Wigan, but Megson is refusing to be downbeat. “These things are sent to try us and we have to try and cope with it, but we have more than adequate replacements,” he said. “We have lost our last four Premier League games while the teams around us have done OK, so we’re right in amongst it now, but it’s not just spirit that we need to show but quality as well.

“I don’t think the situation needed to be brought into any more focus, but it couldn’t be more stark after Sunday. Old Trafford is not the best place to go after that, but our future won’t be dictated just purely and simply on one result against Manchester United. We’ll give it our best shot at Old Trafford and I expect a reaction to the goings on at the weekend but we’ve still got games after that - four at home, four away - and we’ve got to get on with it.”

Megson has ruled out the possibility of resting players with one eye on a more winnable match at home to City on Saturday and is hoping that his team can reproduce the physical approach that unsettled United in the reverse fixture, albeit without the departed Nicolas Anelka and a number of key players to call upon.

“It was the approach we needed to adopt against Wigan, it’s the one we need to adopt against United again and also in the eight games remaining after that,” he said. “We needed to improve when I came here by 150 per cent. We’ve improved by 110, but that’s not enough. We’ve got to kick on regardless of who we’re playing.”