WITH laptops almost outnumbering footballs at the Reebok, Wanderers can justifiably claim to be in the vanguard of information technology.

Dowloading data is now as commonplace as dubbing boots in the days before football entered the computer age.

Even the IT companies are taking advice from the Bolton backroom team -- a quantum leap from the day when Sam Allardyce was appointed in October 1999 and there wasn't a PC or a Mac in sight.

"We had no computers whatsoever on the football side when I arrived here," he recalls. "We got some compensation for one of the academy boys and bought our first computer for the academy out of the money!

"Now the whole of the football staff are 'laptopped-up' and we are almost completely databased."

Football secretary Simon Marland -- in those days the club accountant -- was the only employee in the entire club who had access to the internet before the move from Burnden Park in 1997.

He describes the club's progress over the intervening years as "a mirror image of the increase in our computer literacy."

All the hardware and software in the world would be useless, of course, if it was of no benefit on the field. But, in addition to the extensive database on players' medical and fitness records, Wanderers make use of the fast-developing match and incident analysis systems.

"In order to play our best football, our players need to identify their strengths and weaknesses," the manager says.

"We can pull up, for instance, a midfield player and tell him what the highest levels of performance are needed to be a top Premiership player."

Having embraced Prozone -- the spy-in-the-sky player analysis system -- when it first came out and now an advocate of Sportscode, which offers on-screen review of any match incident, Allardyce can back his own personal judgment with detailed accounts of every player's movement over the course of any game.

"It gives me a huge amount of information both on the day and for later to make sure the players know exactly where they must perform and push on," he adds.

Wanderers added to their IT expertise this week with a new partnership with the UK's leading retailer dabs.com who will provide high-tech equipment for use around the Reebok to improve communication and enhance their analysis techniques.