Bolton have still not kept a clean sheet all season, and even though they held a two-goal lead in the 70th minute here, their efforts to break out of the bottom three were undone by two late goals from Stephen Hunt.

From being reasonably happy with what looked like it would turn out to be a hard-earned victory on a freezing night, the Bolton fans rounded on their manager again when Hull came back into the game, with chants of “Megson out” after Hunt scored his second.

It did not help that with the score at 2-1, Megson had enraged home supporters by withdrawing Ivan Klasnic, goalscorer and current crowd favourite, in order to shore up the midfield with Gavin McCann. The tactic backfired almost immediately, Hunt scoring from a narrow angle after heading in his first from Craig Fagan’s cross, and Bolton were left hanging on.

The game was as numbingly cheerless as the weather until Klasnic fashioned a goal from nowhere in the 20th minute to give Bolton the lead. Prior to that, just two optimistic attempts from Lee Chung-yong and Fabrice Muamba had brought murmurs of approval from the home crowd, even though both had sailed well over Boaz Myhill’s bar. There seemed no particular danger when Lee nodded a ball back to Klasnic on the edge of the D, which made his accurate low drive into Myhill’s bottom left corner all the more impressive. The Croatian looked up, shot early, and beat the goalkeeper’s dive for his fourth goal in four games, and his sixth of the season for Bolton.

Andy Dawson saw a free-kick turned around a post by Jussi Jaaskelainen shortly afterwards, though the Bolton goalkeeper survived a scare when he came for a cross and failed to collect, leaving Stephen Hunt a free header that Gretar Steinson managed to deflect awat from goal for a corner. Hunt was a lively presence on the Hull left wing, even if his crossing was erratic. He dispossessed Lee in the closing minutes of the first half to set up an attack from which Jozy Altidore won a free-kick, only to put a shot well wide of Jaaskelainen’s goal after a laborious dummy routine had successfully fooled the Bolton wall.

Matt Taylor put a free-kick wide at the start of the second half, then put an even better opportunity into the crowd from one of Kevin Davies’s knock-downs. At the other end Kamil Zayatte went close with a header from a corner. Not that close, actually, but just being in the Bolton six yard area was nosebleed territory for Hull. It was significant that Hull’s chance should fall to a defender, and more significant still that when Brown tried to beef up his attack he could only turn to a pair of veterans in Nick Barmby and Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink.

By the time the latter arrived Bolton thought they had made the game safe through a Kevin Davies goal. Considering Bolton have a reputation for scoring from set pieces, and this wasn’t even a slick routine but a route one, straight down the middle free-kick, Hull’s defending was slack. It was obvious Paul Robinson would aim for Davies, yet everyone including Myhill stood off him, and by the time the goalkeeper tried to reach the ball the striker had stretched to nod it past him.

Premier LeagueBolton WanderersHull CityPaul Wilsonguardian.co.uk