PHIL Brown refuses to listen to talk of consolidation and safety first as he sets out his hopes and aspirations for next season's Premiership campaign.

Wanderers are looking up and Colin Todd's chief coach is reaching for the sky.

"Words like 'consolidation' and 'being realistic' are just so negative," says the hyper-enthusiast of the Bolton backroom.

"If you don't set your sights high, you'll never reach the top."

During the summer break, Brown will prepare a graph which will plot a 76-point target for Wanderers.

Pie in the Premiership sky? Maybe, but the same could have been said last August when he placed a similar chart on the manager's wall.

The target then was 92 - an average two points per game. Sight of the graph raised a few eyebrows and caused a few chuckles but Brown diligently plotted his team's progress, week by successful week, and was delighted to have the last laugh as Wanderers turned the title race into a landslide. "I suppose I was being negative by underestimating what we were capable of," he joked at his own expense. "We reached the 92 with games to spare so the target must have been set too low!

"Actually the chairman came in a couple of weeks ago and scribbled 102 points and 102 goals on the side. Well, with one game to go we can at least reach the double century.

"I'll settle for the hundred points. I know there's records attached to the double but we've made enough history and set enough records already this season. A 1-0 win at Tranmere tomorrow will suit me just fine."

Brown has not wished to tempt fate by talking publicly about his graph until now but the exercise is typical of the ultra-confident, positive-thinker Todd recruited as his right hand man less than a year ago.

Enthusiasm was his strong suit. His arithmetic projections turned out to be an unexpected bonus.

Brown explains the theory: "It was something I started at Blackpool the previous season. You bank on taking two points from every game - a phsyical impossibility taken on a match-by-match basis but split into three- or four-game phases, it gives you clear targets.

"Win a game, draw a game is the way it works out. Keep that up for 46 games and you end up with 92 points - and that's good enough to win any Championship, never mind promotion.

"It looks a tall order but it allows you to lose the odd game. A couple of wins together puts you in credit, so the odd defeat doesn't knock you off schedule. So we avoided the pressure of being in a "must win" situation. "We did well early in the season and I recall we were on 37 points - five ahead of schedule - when we lost the game at Birmingham. But I did the graph on the Monday morning and we were still on course.

"That took the pressure off us as the management and, consequently kept the pressure off the players."

Brown acknowledges that it's the players who have won the honours this season, not the chart, but he sees the graph as a symbol of ambition, which he aims to take with him into the Premiership.

"It's just a progress chart and, without good players, you can set all the targets you want and it will make no difference," he accepts.

"We've had the team to do it this season and I don't see why we shouldn't be aiming high next time.

"Over the 38 games, 76 points will win you the title, 10 points down from that and you're in Europe.

"What's wrong with setting that as our target? We aimed for the top last time and made it."

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