Dougie Freedman has appealed for everybody connected to Wanderers to adopt a realistic mindset as they enter the new year sitting 18th in the Championship.

Frustration is growing on the terraces after the Whites failed to make the progress expected during December, taking just seven points from a possible 21.

The year ended on a sour note as table-topping Leicester City inflicted a 5-3 defeat at the King Power Stadium, prompting a sobering statement from Freedman as he looked towards 2014 with a measure of pragmatism.

Wanderers are nine points off the play-offs and seven above the bottom three – but the bigger picture shows a club who are in the final year of their maximum parachute payments from the Premier League and having to cut their cloth to fit.

Freedman believes the reset button has been pushed at the Reebok and the club at which he is now in charge is a completely different prospect from the one that dropped out of the top flight just 18 months ago.

“We have to realise very quickly where we are and what we are trying to achieve and build towards that – not where we used to be,” he told The Bolton News.

“We have to make sure everyone understands that. We are a club that has got to start from the beginning again and make sure the people who come into the building are good enough and aspire to getting up to the next league."

The manager refused to be too downbeat after the defeat at Leicester and is likely to again shuffle his pack as Wanderers welcome Middlesbrough to the Reebok Stadium tomorrow.

Chris Eagles, Darren Pratley, Joe Mason and Mark Davies could be brought back into the line-up – while the manager is also looking for significant defensive improvement.

“I can’t be too down, you know what I am like,” he said. “We went to Leicester and scored three goals, so that in itself is a positive.

“Our approach play and the goals we scored were of the very highest quality and I genuinely believe that if we can get some resilience at the back, then we have got goals in us and we’ll score against anybody.

“At Leicester we came up against a team who were better than us in attack and we couldn’t hold them out because of some very sloppy mistakes that cost us in the end.

“I haven’t got any complaints. We gave a decent account of ourselves in the first half and it was a good pointer to what we have to do.”

The name Vince Lombardi doesn’t hold quite the same cache on this side of the Atlantic as it does in the States, but it is likely anyone who has ever been party to a dressing room team-talk in any discipline has heard at least one thing the revered former Green Bay Packers coach has said.

One of sport’s greatest-ever orators, Lombardi’s quotes read like a manual for athletic motivation, and his soundbites are plastered on sporting club walls around every English-speaking country on the globe – Bolton Wanderers included.

One of his more famous utterances goes: “It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up,” and as I sit down with Stuart Holden to discuss yet another long-term injury, it is the phrase that keeps circling in my head.

We are closing in on three years since his cruel streak of bad luck began, with that challenge by Manchester United defender Jonny Evans at Old Trafford just a fortnight before the FA Cup semi-final against Stoke City.

Though details of just how serious the injury was were scant at the time, we have since learned it was a potential career-ender – “a one in a million,” according to the specialist who attempted to piece together a shattered knee joint.

But Holden came back, playing a memorable, but solitary, game against Aston Villa in the League Cup, only to receive another huge setback as pins inserted into the original injury had caused cartilage damage which required micro-fracture surgery and meant another long lay-off.

Again, the American refused to stay down.

Several months later and with the club now relegated to the Championship he was back out there for a handful of games and a short spell on loan at Sheffield Wednesday at the start of 2013 and ready for a busy summer playing for his country at the Gold Cup.

Then, perversely in the final game of the competition, Holden broke down again, tearing the cruciate ligament of his other knee.

Even his most ardent supporters feared the worst.

And yet five months later, here we are again.

Chirpy as the first day he set foot in the Reebok, Holden has his eyes on another comeback and maybe even a World Cup for good measure.

I mention to him that I’m sick of doing these comeback interviews – and thankfully he takes the playful jibe in the spirit it was intended. He must be sick of reading them.

Holden is back in the camp, positivity oozing from every pore. But he and I both know that there is only so long that bonhomie is going to last – he has to get it right this time.

“I’m never going back,” he says, switching to deadly serious mode. “Hey, I understand the doubters completely. When you look at it from the outside it’s perfectly normal to be sceptical but I believe in myself, and not only that I know I will get back to where I want to be.

“It’s nice when I get messages from people who do believe and want to see me succeed because they will be the ones who are standing by my side when I do get back out on the pitch and show people what I can do again.

“I know that my playing time hasn’t been what I or anyone else wanted but I fully believe I have prepared myself this time.

“My attitude is that I am going to be back out on that field and no longer be that cheerleader off the field – I want to be a leader on it for Bolton Wanderers.”

Holden has worked with renowned knee specialist Holly Silvers in Los Angeles to get him back to this stage but with an improved medical team now in place at Wanderers. He is happy to stay put for the final stages of his rehab.

“It’s important with any long-standing injury to get away for a bit, and I’ve had a few so I know what I’m talking about,” he said with a self-deprecating note.

“I want to be here. Sometimes when you do your work away from the club, no matter how much my personal trainer kept in touch, you never fully gauge where someone is at until they get their hands on me.

“Everyone has made the decision that it would be best for me now that I’m stepping up for some grass work and cardiovascular work that it’s best to be at the club.

“Sparky (Mark Davies) went through it, all the running sessions, and I know they won’t be fun but I am looking forward to putting in the miles to play at the level required.”

Holden’s contract expires at the Reebok this summer, which also brings with it a World Cup finals in Brazil – two deadlines that heap massive pressure on both the club and the midfielder to get the timing of his return to action absolutely right.

But proving he has a future at Bolton also goes hand-in-hand with proving to Jurgen Klinsmann that his improving performances in the summer were no flash in the pan.

Earning a place in the US squad is a goal for Holden but not necessarily the be all and end all. If the last three years have taught him anything, it is probably that he should enjoy the here and now rather than looking too far ahead.

“The World Cup is obviously something I want to be a part of again, it was one of the greatest experiences of my career playing in South Africa in 2010,” he said. “I’d love to be a part of that team but to do that I have to be playing every week here.

“I’m here with Bolton and if I can get back playing week-in, week-out I think I could make a good run at being in that team.

“In the back of my mind of course I have thought ‘if you don’t get to Brazil it’s not the end of the world’ – it doesn’t mean it’s any less of a goal.

“At the end of the day, this is more important. Playing for my club, that I’m with all year round, is more important.

“I’m only 28 – I can still make the next one – so first and foremost my focus is on finishing what I have started. I don’t want to mess anything up.

“If that means not coming back a few weeks or months early, then okay, but I firmly believe I can do both.”

However attainable you believe Holden’s aims to be, it is hard not to be impressed with his resolve – which handily links in with another gem from Lombardi.

“Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.”

I’d guess in Holden’s case, the reverse is also true.

Jay Spearing confessed his disappointment following Wanderers' defeat in an eight goal thriller against Leicester on Sunday afternoon, but admitted that the team only had themselves to blame.

In a game which saw the Whites take the lead on two occasions after overcoming Leicester's early opener, the midfielder explained his frustration at what could have been on a testing afternoon at the King Power Stadium.

“It is hard result to take - we went away from home to the league leaders and scored three goals but we still managed to lose the game,” he said. “We were the architects of our own downfall and we were really disappointed with the final result.

"I felt that we deserved to get something out of the game, but we allowed Leicester to get back into the match and they quickly got into their stride.

“The penalty was a harsh decision that went against us but Andy Lonergan made a fantastic save to keep the score level, but our own mistakes cost us the match."

To see more of Jay's post-match interview, please click on the video below.

Having scored twice against Leicester City in Sunday's 5-3 defeat at the King Power Stadium, Andre Moritz admitted that it was undoubtedly a case of mixed emotions at following the clash.

In a game which saw six goals in the first half alone, Wanderers were ultimately undone by two late strikes from the hosts to leave the East Midlands empty handed.

A bitter pill to swallow for Moritz who now has five goals to his name for the club, the midfielder explained his frustration at the final result given the endeavour shown by the team against the league leaders.

“It’s mixed feelings because we were twice in front, but it was just a crazy game,” he told the club website after the final whistle. “We were capable of scoring really good goals and putting them under pressure a couple of times during the game, but we keep conceding too easy goals.

“I was lucky to be there and put the ball in the back of the net twice, but it doesn’t count for anything.

“As a team, we need to defend better and be more focused on the game – especially when you play against as strong a team as Leicester, if you give them half a chance they will put the ball in the back of the net.

“We just need to be more solid in the games coming up, but I think for large parts of this match we had the control of the ball. I think we deserved at least a point, but it’s onto to next match.”

With Wanderers next in action against Middlesbrough on New Year’s Day, the 27-year-old confessed that the quick turnaround of fixtures could work to the team’s advantage as they look to bounce back at the first time of asking.

“We have to start 2014 with three points against Middlesbrough with the supporters on our side and hopefully start a run," he said. "That is what it’s about – winning games.”

He added: “It’s a really important game for us – it’s the first one in 2014 at home and we need to win more games at the Reebok.

“We know that we need to be better at home, but I think we’re on the right track and we are finding the way we want to play. I just hope we can play well against Middlesbrough, defend better and keep on scoring.”

Watch back all the goals from Bolton's 5-3 defeat away at Leicester City