Marc Iles Bolton Wanderers column: Ian Evatt must heed Wembley ghosts

That tortuous 90 minutes against Stoke City is often cited as one of the triggers for Wanderers’ downfall, although this writer would argue that Stuart Holden’s injury at Old Trafford a month earlier had a more profound effect on the club’s eventual slide from the Premier League.

Tactically outclassed on the day – albeit by a side that seemed to score with every shot in the first half – the 5-0 defeat will forever rank as one of the club’s darkest hours on the pitch.

In the 12 long years since, few football club’s supporters have experienced such a soul-wrenching journey. Four relegations, countless High Court visits, administration and, very nearly, complete liquidation. There have been two promotions, too, but even those celebratory times were overshadowed, be it by nefarious ownership and player disputes in 2017, or a global pandemic creating financial uncertainty in 2021.

But next weekend, flanked by 33,000 Whites fans, this resurgent team led by Ian Evatt gets a chance to exorcise the ghosts of 2011 and plant a new signpost in the ground, provided, of course, that they don’t fall into the same traps that Owen Coyle’s mob did back then.

Glancing down the team-sheet that day, even with a dozen years of hindsight, some of the big tactical calls can be questioned, not least the inclusion of Johan Elmander as a midfielder.

A game of that magnitude was not the time for experiments, and with specialists like Tamir Cohen and Mark Davies fit and available, it was no huge surprise that the Swede was swallowed up by his more physical opponents in the middle of the park.

Zat Knight’s inclusion alongside Gary Cahill at centre-half was also a surprise. Like Elmander, he had done well a week earlier in a 3-0 win against West Ham United at the Reebok, but David Wheater – who had started the previous seven league games, seemed more suited to the rough and tumble Tony Pulis’s side was bound to offer.

We should remember that some great football was played under Coyle and his was perhaps the last Wanderers side that truly embraced wide midfielders like Martin Petrov and Chung-Yong Lee. It is also fair to point out that his 4-4-2 shape looked outdated on the day against Stoke’s 4-2-3-1, with neither Cahill nor Knight able to shackle Jonathan Walters, who had dropped to play behind Kenwyne Jones.

Coyle’s managerial skillset always leaned more towards motivation and camaraderie than tactical analysis and discipline, and never more so than on that April afternoon.

Digging deeper into the club’s preparations for the semi-final, though, even some of the senior players in the squad were questioning whether enough homework was being done.

Just as Evatt’s side will do on Saturday, Coyle took his players down to Wembley for a walk around, helping to acclimatise those who were unfamiliar with the stadium. It had worked when he took Burnley up into the Premier League via the play-offs, and when he was a Bolton player under Bruce Rioch in 1995.

The squad – minus full-back Paul Robinson, who stayed with his heavily pregnant wife - stayed in London on Tuesday evening, with the instruction to report for training on Thursday at Euxton, where there would also be some media duties to fulfil before returning to the capital on Friday.

Accounts vary from player to player on how many took advantage of Coyle’s goodwill and the lay-over in London but an evening meal was certainly extended into the night by some.

Club skipper Kevin Davies told us: “I didn’t agree with it. I spoke with the manager at the time and suggested the time could be better used.

“We went down there for a walk round and then had some dinner with a couple of drinks.

“Whether that had an effect on the game, you can only really say with hindsight now. But I know from speaking with people like Danny Higginbotham, who was at Stoke at the time, that Tony Pulis had them in doing double sessions and working on shape to beat us.”

Wanderers had lost the box-to-box talents of Holden, and one of the key characters in the dressing room, but the mood within the camp was buoyant going into the game.

In the year Bolton had lost the legendary Nat Lofthouse, there was a feeling among the fanbase at the time that the club’s name was written on the cup. Whether that had seeped into the dressing room, who knows?

Saturday’s semi-final had seen Manchester City pip Manchester United, and a guaranteed European spot awaited either Bolton or Stoke the following reason regardless of what happened in the final. In the event, the Potters went on to tackle the likes of Besiktas, Dynamo Kyiv, Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hajduk Split the following season, while Coyle’s crestfallen Whites fell into a nosedive, accelerated by injury misfortune, a reduced budget and poor recruitment.

A very different club approached Wembley this time around. But lessons can be learned on how to prepare for a game of such importance.

Evatt is at least timing his squad’s walk around Wembley on the day before the final, with the players travelling down to train at Brentford next Friday.

He has also had the luxury of a several days without a game, which gives ample time for tactical work on the training ground, albeit without a handful of players on international duty.

The Bolton boss often makes play of being ‘detail oriented’ and on giving his players as much information as they can handle on an opponent in the build-up to a game. To this end, it would be a shock to see them look under-prepared.

Given the Whites also face a Good Friday game at Exeter City not too long after the final, any celebrations or commiserations may well be kept to a minimum too.

With George Johnston and MJ Williams available again after injury, Evatt will have choices to make in his line-up but surely none of the magnitude Coyle faced when debating whether to stick with Elmander as an auxiliary midfielder back in 2011, or resisting the urge to restore Wheater to his team.

Some say the worst thing that could have happened for Bolton back then was to steamroll West Ham at home, giving the notoriously superstitious Coyle the temptation to stick with a winning formula and try to maintain momentum.

Evatt’s side played well at Sheffield Wednesday and will take heart from the performance after a sticky patch of league form. It was by no means a perfect display, however, and to beat Plymouth they will surely have to ask more questions in attack than they did at Hillsborough.

While they walked out last Friday night with heads held high, Bolton are still on a run of four league games without a win, and this season have taken just one point from Plymouth despite two decent showings. There is room for improvement.

One could argue that the most important games are yet to come, with eight remaining to secure a play-off position, and all the tension that follows. But this does feel like a moment where Bolton’s recent revival needs a moment to be commemorated, so rather than dwell on the failures of 2011, it might be more prescient to recall Phil Brown lifting the Sherpa Van Trophy back in 1989?

Football moves in cycles; always has. Evatt and his players need to make the occasion count.