Bolton Wanderers midfielder Fabrice Muamba's fight for survival gives team-mates sleepless nights

They were just too anxious, still reliving the harrowing scenes of White Hart Lane and fretting about their team-mate Fabrice Muamba in his fight for survival.

But as they relived the extent of their own trauma after a victory that honoured their battling colleague, it was good to see them raise a smile at the thought that the recovering Muamba may well himself have been smiling, not quite able to believe what he had seen.

Especially from his friend David Wheater.

The centre back, who had scored only once all season, proved the most unlikely match-winner with his two first-half headed goals and was delighted that staff at the London Chest Hospital put a television in Muamba’s room in intensive care so he could see the Match of the Day highlights of the win that dragged Bolton out of the bottom three.

“Fabrice won’t believe I’ve scored twice. I don’t think anyone will!” he said, while team-mate Darren Pratley concurred: “Two goals from Wheater? That will give him the biggest smile!”

Hopefully, the players reckoned, the chance for Muamba to see how fans, not just from these two clubs but all around the country, had responded to his plight with such unanimity of spirit would offer another him a real boost to his recuperation. “If that can bring him a bit of enjoyment in hospital, then we’ve done well,” said Pratley.

If Muamba, “a gem of a lad” according to Bolton manager Owen Coyle, could have heard his team-mates talking about how hard it had been to play again after watching the dreadful battle to revive him following his collapse at Spurs, he would have understood just how deep they must have had to dig, both physically and mentally, to win Saturday’s game.

“I don’t think you sleep when something like that happens to one of your close mates. We saw him every day and then in effect he was dead on the pitch. When you see that close up, it’s hard sleeping,” said Pratley.

“From very early on after last week’s game, until maybe Tuesday or Wednesday, the lads weren’t sleeping,” revealed Sam Ricketts. “We were worried for Fab. There were a few lads, who even when they were asleep, had flashbacks to certain things they’d seen on Saturday.

“It wasn’t until we knew Fab was doing so well that we could start to erase those memories and start thinking of the happy ones again. It’s been such an emotional drain.”

By the time Bolton had repelled the final Blackburn siege, following Steven Nzonzi’s second-half goal, Coyle reckoned his players were out on their feet.

Coyle had found out more about them over this week. He already knew they were, in footballing terms, “a great bunch of lads”; now he realised they also “were great people as men”. He had told them they did not have to play if their minds were not right but, ultimately, his problem was only who to leave out “because they all wanted to represent Fabrice”.

It will be the same on Tuesday night when Bolton travel to Spurs for the rearranged FA Cup quarter-final tie. “If we win that, we’re at Wembley and I think Fab would want us to do that,” said Wheater. “I think it will be difficult but now we know he’s getting a bit better, we can go there and play for him like we did today.”

Muamba’s fight, it feels in some special way, may be becoming Bolton’s inspiration.