Walton was dispossessed when trying to turn Evanilson in the fifth minute of this game, the Cherries striker rolling into an empty net to really dampen the mood inside Portman Road after what had been a front footed start from the Blues.
O’Neil has already swapped keepers once this season, dropping £8.5m summer signing Kjell Scherpen after four Premier League games, and there will now be further debate about who should be No.1 during an international break.
“There will definitely be nothing knee-jerk,” said O’Neil, when asked about how he viewed his goalkeeper situation.
“Unless I bump into a fan, I’m not going to hear any of that noise anyway.
“I just watch and work every day. Walts has been better than Kjell for the last few weeks and that’s why he’s got the shirt at the moment.
“So if Kjell can show me he’s better than Walts, or if Palms (Alex Palmer) can show me he’s better than both of them, then me and Reg (Rene Gilmartin), the goalkeeper coach, who has a big say in this stuff, will choose the one who’s best in goal at that moment.”
O’Neil, who labelled Walton’s error ‘massive’ in his post-match assessment, continued: “Walts is a good goalkeeper. He’s been here a long time, he’s steady. Today isn’t a mistake that Walts makes very often.
Christian Walton’s mistake gifted Bournemouth an early lead at Portman Road. (Image: Ross Halls)
“We try to pass the ball, of course we do, it’s the Premier League and we’re not going to boot the ball to the top all the time. But once we tried to pass the ball, and it’s come back from Dara (O’Shea) to Walts, then Walts knows that we should go to the top line at that moment and we should be safe.
“We talk about this a lot with the players – we choose where we lose the ball. So if we get in a situation that is uncomfortable at any moment, we lose the ball as far away from our goal as possible.
“But that’s really easy to say. It’s really easy to do in training. Sometimes, though, something could happen in a game that just throws you for a second and Evanilson is very good at pressing like that.
“So Walts has made a slight mistake there. Maybe I’ve made a slight mistake in not being clear enough with him that, ‘When it comes back to you, mate, this needs to go to the top’. So we all have to take responsibility for that.”