PROUD Ipswich Town boss Paul Lambert hailed his players after they made a long-overdue return to winning ways.

Collin Quaner netted twice in 11 first-half minutes as the bottom-of-the-table Blues won 2-1 to cap a miserable week for fellow Championship strugglers Bolton.

The German forward, previously with only one goal since arriving on loan from Huddersfield Town in January, struck in the 33rd and 44th minutes before a last-gap own goal from Josh Emmanuel accounted for the Trotters' consolation.

"The football was great, we controlled the game and the two goals were fitting for the first half," said Lambert.

"I'm disappointed with the goal in the last minute but performance-wise it was very good.

"The performance doesn't surprise me because we've been playing well for weeks and months.

"We just haven't had the reward until now.

"You can have all the great play you want but you need that finishing touch and Collin produced two brilliant finishes."

Ipswich remain 13 points from safety with only six games remaining but Lambert refuses to give-up.

"Until someone says 'that's you away' you keep picking teams you think can win games," he added.

"That is what I did today."

The match had been placed in doubt over recent days.

Bolton's players went on strike over the unpaid wages of non-playing staff, while the club survived another High Court winding-up order before a prohibition notice and an IT failure threatened the postponement of the match.

Lambert revealed he had his team lined up for a training session at Manchester City had the game not taken place.

Instead, a text at 6.30am on Saturday morning was Lambert's confirmation engineers had finally fixed the IT issues.

"It was a disgrace," said Lambert.

"At this level, there's something not quite right.

"The Bolton fans must be going mad with it.

"Even for ourselves to come up six hours on Friday and our supporters as well."

Counterpart Phil Parkinson conceded a miserable week off the pitch played a significant part in Bolton's defeat.

"You can only take so many knocks as a team and that's what it looked like in the first half," said the former Colchester United boss.

"We looked like a team who had had the stuffing knocked out of them and also hadn't trained properly.

"The preparation this week hasn't been good enough for a Championship-level performance in a game of this magnitude

"You look at the first 45 minutes and we were so far off the pace, with the ball and without the ball.

"As a staff, if you have two or three players who haven't trained, we always think 'do we play them or not?'

"But when you have a whole squad who haven't been able to prepare properly it shows.

"Everyone watching the game would have seen that.

"In the first half, Ipswich looked like a team who were already down and playing with a bit of freedom.

"They also played as though they had had a good week's preparation and we were just the opposite.

"Last week we had such a lift by winning at QPR.

"Then the lads needed a lift in terms of 'are we getting paid? Has the club been taken over?' That didn't happen.

"The lads actually trained well on Thursday and Friday but you could see we looked off the pace."