PASSION is what fuels football, it is why hundreds of supporters will make a 300-mile round trip to Northampton, and it is why thousands more will turn up at the Toughsheet this weekend.

Every person who buys a ticket has a stake. They have the right to an opinion on how well the game is being played, which players are pulling their weight, which are not, whether Ian Evatt is picking the right ones, or playing the right way.

Part of the fun of the game is that everyone sees it differently and you don’t have to have played football to the highest level to understand its nuances.

Emotions – positive and negative – run through the sport at its core. The tribalism among fanbases is what makes English football and its envied pyramid of clubs so great, but there is also a downside, and one which has been accentuated by the rise of social media.

Increasingly the lines are being blurred between passionate opinion, and outright abuse.

At Wanderers, frustration has been simmering for several months now. The club’s form has been up and down since the turn of the year, then there was Wembley, followed by the well-documented issues since August. It has created a difficult environment for the supporters who are desperate to see this club back at a level of football which better fits its historical placing.

Ricardo Santos personifies the modern-day Bolton better than anyone else. He has been central to the manager’s gameplan since early in his first season, has captained the club, and been virtually ever-present in good times and bad.

He suffered more than most at the start of the year, playing through a calf injury with painkillers, which all culminated in that desperately disappointing play-off final. He received criticism for not speaking to the press after the game – those duties were taken up by Kyle Dempsey and Gethin Jones – but has since been present at two press conferences, before the Leyton Orient game and after the defeat to Exeter City.

Although we can now put the defender’s inconsistent form into better context because of the injuries, a level of criticism has been understandable.

Unfortunately, a very small minority of people seem unable to make their point without resorting to abuse. Others do so for no other reason than it brings them attention.

And it is a problem on the increase.

A study by the PFA in 2021 showed that two in five Premier League players received abusive messages on the Twitter platform during the 2020/21 season. The same year, football clubs and media organisations joined in unison to stage a weekend-long social media blackout calling for the government to bring in stronger legislation to force platforms to take action against illegal content.

Santos closed his Twitter account at the end of last season and though a few Bolton players are still on the platform, the level of activity is relatively low.

The latest incidents involved abusive messages sent to the defender’s wife via Instagram after Saturday’s win at Crawley. The root of the problem? Seemingly the fact that Santos has not applauded the supporters for the last few games.

Evatt chose to give the club captaincy to George Thomason a couple of weeks ago to help Santos find his way back to form under reduced pressure. The decision was made at a time when the manager’s job security also looked in question, but results have improved, and Wanderers have an opportunity at Northampton tonight to put three straight wins together for the first time in 2024.

The Bolton boss remains fiercely supportive of a player who has made more appearances for him than any other, and very much sees Santos as part of his longer-term plans.

Fixing the problem is not a simple matter, however, as Santos is in the final year of his contract and evidently unhappy at the treatment he has received from a minority.

He has taken a very public stance by refusing to applaud supporters after the final whistle or to celebrate with team-mates after a goal, but he has done so with the backing of Evatt and the squad. How long he intends to keep that course of action is unclear.

Wanderers are also keen to underline that the problem with online abuse has only stemmed from a tiny percentage of the supporters. But with the manager also revealing that his 12-year-old son had also been targeted a couple of weeks ago it is clearly an issue that needs to be resolved quickly.

More importantly, the thousands of supporters who can use social media responsibly can also call out those who are determined to disrespect the club by abusing its players and staff. For richer, for poorer, we are all in it together.