Bolton Wanderers fans column - Paying price of Wembley loss

Big summer ahead for Bolton,

by Liam Hatton

WHETHER you are a football club, a multi million pound corporation on Wall Street or even just a local coffee shop down the road, the concept remains the same - if you miss out on your business targets then cost cutting will be a strong possibility.

As we all well know, Bolton Wanderers failed in their target of gaining promotion from League One. This is a safe space, we are now at the point in which we can say it and learn to deal with the consequences.

There is no secret that promotion was the ultimate aim, evidenced by the backing received by Ian Evatt over the last few seasons. Just to recap (figures may not be accurate): close to half a million pounds on Victor Adeboyejo, £750,000 on Aaron Collins and £320,000 for Dion Charles. On top of that, high quality loanees such as Paris Maghoma and Championship ready players like Josh Sheehan and Nathan Baxter round out a high-end League One outfit.

But that is the issue, it is still a League One team and financial outlay will need to reflect that. Sharon Brittan and the board will not be overly impressed with what transpired at Wembley, so whether that results in some players being sold remains to be seen (Victor? Dion?) Regardless, it sounds like the introduction of safe standing to the Toughsheet stadium will be delayed after Wanderers missed out on £8-10 million of Championship money. It does sound like a tough pill to swallow when you read the numbers out in black and white.

CEO Neil Hart commented on there being two eventualities in place - one for Championship and one for League One football, so at least there is a plan in place, no matter how much we wish it was the former as opposed to the latter.

So, what happens with the make-up of this year’s squad? Well, it is highly unlikely we shell out another £750,000 for a high-quality centre back or midfielder. There is also more chance of me lining up at left back for England at the Euros than Maghoma returning, so that is another blow.

Evatt has dealt with losing high quality loanees before in James Trafford and Conor Bradley, and whilst it is not ideal, it is also not the end of the world. But there is no getting around the fact that this summer’s transfer activity will revolve around a lot of free agents and loan pickups.

January’s business was a mixed bag. Maghoma and Aaron Collins were great pieces of business, but questions need to be asked about Calvin Ramsay, Caleb Taylor (although injuries played a part) and Nat Ogbeta who had good and bad spells.

For Wanderers to improve their squad with a reduction in funds, this will require a lot of activity to be nailed on from the jump. Other teams in the league will fancy their chances with a blank chequebook (I am looking at you Birmingham and Huddersfield), so this truly is a vital summer for the club.

It has been a quiet week at Wanderers - much to Tony Thompson's chagrin (Image: Camerasport)

Saturdays without BWFC,

by Tony Thompson

WELCOME to the Twilight Zone, the nowhere land between the end of the season and the start of pre-season where a couple of slow news days can become a terrifying silence.

No football fan has ever enjoyed this time of year. From having something to centre your attention on a Saturday afternoon, and most Tuesday nights in Bolton’s case, you are suddenly left with a weekend where obscure tasks suddenly become important.

I was asked last Sunday, a week after that game at Wembley that I don’t want to talk about, whether I wanted to go to a garden centre to pick out some new bedding plants. I am not due to work on a weekend for the next two weeks, and now I am seriously contemplating dropping into the office to see if I can pick up a few extra shifts.

I’d spent the previous day walking up rainy trails in Cumbria, explaining how Bolton had struggled against teams who press their back three in possession, especially without a physical target man up front, but my wife decided to start jogging, then sprinting in an effort to put some distance between us.

The frustration has been hard to shift and it doesn’t help at all that another local team who play in red happened to win a trophy the other day, bringing them all out from under rocks to tell me how they’d always had faith in Erik Ten Hag. Do me a favour.

There has been nothing from the club to distract me from the tedium. There was a flicker of interest in midweek when Gethin Jones and Josh Sheehan got called up for internationals but other than that I was seriously considering submitting an application to make bacon butties from the back of a van in the Fan Zone, just to see whether I’d get through the process.

Maybe I should have booked a holiday, as everyone at Bolton Wanderers seems to have done? I could have bumped into Ian Evatt by the pool and explained my theories on set pieces.

We haven’t even had the obligatory transfer gossip that we normally do at this time of year. What are the papers up to? Why are they not circulating random names that probably have no chance of ever playing for the club, just so we have something to talk about? Shame on you.

I’ll start us off. Peter Odemwingie cut me up at the roundabout on the A6 heading towards Middlebrook. Surely he isn’t heading to Asda to do his big shop?