It was Burstow’s first goal since October and ensured an important three points, which take Bolton up to third in the table on goal difference.

Schumacher admitted that his side weren’t at their fluid best but was pleased to complete a productive week, which has seen seven points picked up from the last three games.

“Delighted with the result, it’s an important win,” he said. “It’s been a good week for us, seven points from a three-game week has been good. 

“We will definitely play better than that. I think both teams were guilty of not showing loads of quality at times.

“There were a lot of errors, too many poor touches, technique let us down, certainly in the first half. 

“But the effort was there and the energy was there to keep pushing. As I say, we’ve played better and not won, so we’ll take the result and enjoy it.”

Burstow had only been on the pitch for a matter of minutes when he stepped up to take the penalty, but it didn’t stop the Hull loanee from smashing a confident finish past Killian Cahill.

“I’m delighted for him,” the head coach added. “He practices penalties every week in training. We always say, ‘This is your matchday penalty’.

“He’s always practicing, he hasn’t had one all season. When he steps up there, I’m thinking, ‘Come on, Mase, please, just score. Get yourself going again’.

“He hasn’t scored since October 4. A bit nervous for him, but he looked calm. It was a great execution of the penalty, nice and safe up the middle, gets the three points that we needed.”

After a tepid first half, Thierry Gale broke the deadlock just 29 seconds after the restart with an accurate finish into the bottom corner.

When asked about his half-time message to the squad, Schumacher replied: “Just tidy up a little bit. 

“We gave the ball away unnecessarily, Thierry and Max (Conway), a couple of times on that left-hand side, but it was just going out of play.

“I thought the pitch wasn’t great today, it didn’t play brilliant today. As I say, just techniques and a little bit of poor execution of passes just let us down so that was the first thing we spoke about, just tidying up. 

“Then the way these play, they’re man-for-man, so you’ve got to show support angles. As soon as the ball goes into someone, there’s got to be somebody else running off the back of your man to receive the ball.

“It’s not easy playing against a man-for-man system. That’s where technically you’ve got to be really good, tidy up a little bit and just try to be a bit cleaner. 

“Thankfully, we were after 30 seconds, we got ourselves in front. A few minutes later, we give the ball away unnecessarily and it’s 1-1. It was one of those days.”

Three minutes later, Theo Archibald got the visitors back level with a clinical first-time finish from Ollie O’Neill’s cross.

 “We just lost the ball,” Schumacher recalled. “We had the ball, Thierry passed it inside to Ethan (Erhahon), we turned it over and he counter-attacked. It’s a great cut-back from O’Neill.

“It was an unbelievable finish from Archibald. A good goal from their point of view, poor one from us because we were in control of possession. 

“We didn’t let our heads drop and I felt if anyone was going to get a second goal, it was going to be us. We had a few big chances, Chris Forino had a big chance. The other one from a set-piece, I don’t know how it didn’t go in the goal. 

“We kept pushing, I thought we were better once we changed the system a little bit and got a few fresh legs on.

“Jordi (Osei-Tutu) looked tired, his third game in a week. Once we changed a little bit, we looked a little bit more dangerous.”