EXETER City manager Gary Caldwell has urged his players to use the frustration of their defeat at Wycombe Wanderers on New Year’s Day to motivate them for today’s League One clash with Bolton Wanderers.

City looked on course for a well-deserved point at Adams Park until referee Scott Simpson awarded a contentious penalty deep into stoppage time. It was converted by Wycombe loanee Aaron Morley – who has since been recalled by his parent club Bolton and could feature against the Grecians again today – leaving City pretty upset and angry at full-time.

Simpson’s decision was one of several dubious decisions made throughout the course of the game – he also disallowed a perfectly legitimate gal by Ilmari Niskanen – which ultimately led to Caldwell being sent off after the awarding of the spot kick. However, defeat should not detract from what was a very good performance from the Grecians and one that Caldwell wants to see repeated today.

“It is not an easy game and the frustration at the result at Wycombe is hopefully a real motivation for us, but the performance levels, our seven points over Christmas was excellent and we have to go into the Bolton game with real confidence and real belief,” he said.

“We are a very dangerous team when we know what we are, who we are and how we are going to win football matches, so we recover and start preparation today (Thursday) and then going into tomorrow with the players, everyone has to be ready for another really difficult match, but be clear on how we are going to win that football match because so many things we did at Wycombe were very good.

“Little details we can always get better at, we can always brush up in certain areas. That is always our philosophy as a coaching staff, win, lose or draw, we are trying to make players and the team better.