Speed Stripped of Coaching Duties Amid Bolton 'devilment'

Gary Speed has been stripped of his coaching duties at Bolton Wanderers and will now concentrate on trying to regain his first-team place at the club. Speed - who took over as Bolton's first-team coach during the summer - has had a strained working relationship with the club's manager, Sammy Lee, and held lengthy discussions with him yesterday after being dropped from the squad for Sunday's game against Chelsea.

Today Lee issued a terse statement, which read: "I would like him to focus on his game at this moment in time. I don't want anything to distract him. I want everybody - coaches and players - to be fully focused on their game."

Speed, whose criticisms of Lee's tactics have been supported by some of the club's senior players, had provisionally agreed an extension to his contract a few weeks ago that would have made him assistant manager, but that offer is no longer on the table. However Speed's agent Haydn Evans today claimed that reports of a series of rows between Lee and Speed have been exaggerated.

"It is only natural that players are upset if they're not in the team," Evans told the Manchester Evening News. "Over the last couple of days, he has met with Sammy. It's been decided the best thing is for Gary to concentrate on playing.

"There has been some devilment going on. But it hasn't come from Gary and it hasn't come from Sammy. I have known Gary since he was 14 or 15 and he is professional in everything he does. The priority for everyone at the club is to start picking up points. He is 100% behind Bolton and getting back his shirt."