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Is this true? We have c.16k season ticket holders, and an average home attendance of c.19k, from a town of 200k residents, within a borough of 300k. This is in the third tier of English football. Beyond the borough, we have three of biggest clubs in Europe (if not the world) and another two Premier League (for now) clubs, within an hours drive of our stadium. Beyond a very few neighbouring smaller towns, such as Atherton and Leigh, with no league team of their own, their is a multitude of competition for the “floating” fan in north west. Similar sized towns and cities, such as Ipswich, Stoke, Norwich are a monopoly league club in their county and struggle to get better crowds than Bolton, when we’re at the same level. I’d argue that our support is very robust, when measured against (admittedly slightly smaller) local peers, such as Blackburn, Blackpool, Preston and Burnley, and further afield peers such as Charlton and Crystal Palace. Short of the sort of billionaire investment that delivers success and the associated glory hunters, I’d suggest our maximum core support is unlikely to ever get beyond 30k. To have two thirds of that core support buying tickets for every game in third tier football is anything but fickle, in my opinion.

Everyone will have different opinions, personally I felt barely any confidence going into the play offs last season. This year I feel highly confident that we can get the job done. We just played the runaway leaders of the league and battered them all over the pitch. We battered Oxford and Reading recently at home who are both solid. Id fancy us to grind out a draw away and get the job done home in the 2nd leg. The crowds and support has been building over the past few years, however I think recently we've really shown our potential. Unbelievable atmosphere today, I was a bit gutted we didn't win and possibly lost our chance of automatic promotion. But I can't help but just feel immensely proud of how far we've come as a club.

Run their course!! FFS! Turned club round completely, record ST sales, upgrading hotel, put in fanzone, got the town on side brought in Swiss investors, invested in good players, got us promoted, could be promoted again this season… who you think gonna come in and do better… you’re away with the fairies.

I genuinely have no idea what some people are on about. We were absolutely brilliant yesterday against a league winning team. We beat them all over the pitch and were 2 sitters away from winning. There was fuck all wrong yesterday. What else could Evatt do? If it is the play offs we beat anyone. Including the tangerine shite.

Right then, 7 big games left to determine our fate. Peterborough last game has memorable connotations, so thought I'd root through some crows entrails, slaughter a couple of heifers (and clutch a few straws) to see what the gods have in store for us. Stevenage A 100% record against these boys from 3 games. Absolute piece of piss. We'll make it 4 wins, a pro-rata 133% win ratio, break mathematics forever and stay on the coat-tails of them fuckers above us. Verdict: Bolton win. Reading H Haven't beat these at home for a while, but then again even Sammy Lee managed a win so how fucking hard can it be. Our opponents in one of our most memorable moments of recent decades, they'll play their part in this one too. Verdict: Bolton win. Bristol Rovers A We owe these for the shocking performance at home. We've won our last three at their place, and I reckon we weren't even trying in at least two of them. No way they're stopping us getting at least a win off them this season. Nailed on. Verdict: Bolton win. Portsmouth H Generally decent record at home v these. Beat them twice last season. They won't fancy coming to ours at the business end of the season when we've just spanked Stevenage, Reading and Brizzle. Nervy Pompey performance, imperious from our boys, comfortable win. Verdict: Bolton win. Shrewsbury H We've won 5 of our last 6 at home v these. They couldn't even beat us in the covid shortened disaster with onions in charge. They're wasting the coach fare even turning up. Verdict: Bolton win. Port Vale H They are shit against us, they can't help it. They've only ever won one league game at ours in 18 attempts, and only when we trying out a new comedy routine. Our aggregate home score is 48-15 and we gave them 6 of them. Absolute nailed on thrashing. Verdict: Bolton win. Peterborough A This is the biggie. The last (only) time we played them last game of the season, we needed a win to go up .We won. It's written in the stars this one. We've won the final game in each of the last three seasons. The last three times when it's really mattered, needing a win to go up or stay up, we've come up with the goods (Crawley, Forest, Peterborough). We'll do it again, it's written in the stars. Verdict: Bolton win.

No coach at any level coaches to leave players unmarked on the edge of the penalty areas from corners. It’s lack of communication from the playing group and nothing to do with Evatt or coaches. Seems a stick to beat Evatt with, especially for those who’ve wanted him out for months… utterly ridiculous, he’s got his faults but the positives outweigh the negatives.

Fuck the performance. We won. With a depleted front line and the only fresh legs available are 47 years old. Winning ugly is winning.

Good win today, obvs. ... But why can we play with a tempo like that today, but have Santos standing on the ball at Stevenage. Our tempo is what makes us a good side. As has been said earlier, if we lose being a good to watch team nobody will be overly arsed. It's the tepid, slow games where we create fuck all that irates the fans. Play like we did today for the rest of the season and we'll go up. COYWM.

Nearly an accidental Haiku.

Birmingham are below us in the "massive tiers" in my opinion. Think folk focus too much on crowd sizes, when it is certainly a factor but there is a lot to consider. For me, it's about, Trophies, recent and historical attendances, players, years in the top flight, stadium size, recent successes(past 15/20 years). When you factor that all in, I believe we're beyond the likes of a team like Birmingham, comfortably. Major Honours Bolton - 4 Birmingham - 2 Years in top flight Bolton - 73 Birmingham - 57 Current average attendance Bolton - 20,608 Birmingham - 20,306 Record attendance Bolton - 69,912 Birmingham- 59,971 Stadium capacity Bolton - 28,723 Birmingham - 29,409 The facts present themselves. The only thing they come close to us is on crowds, yet we still beat them this season in a lower league and have done in the past, despite them being the 2nd largest city in the country and us being a town. In short, we are much bigger than Birmingham City. Teams id put similar to Birmingham are the likes of Southampton, Norwich, Crystal Palace, Fulham etc. We're more comparable to the likes of Ipswich, Sheff U, even West Ham more historically, Derby, Pompey, West Brom Etc.

Drained with it all me. Proper had enough and fuckin tired. Not enjoyed this season one bit. Constantly built up then having the life sucked out of you.

Can we not save all this bullshit for when the season has actually finished?

Evatt out? Alex Neil? Lump on vale? fuck me

It was f*king handball

If I'd have responded to this yesterday, my angry/emotional/pissed up response would have been dismissively condescending. And it shouldn't do because it's a well thought out opinion, which I'll take the time out to respond to. But it does come across as someone who thinks they have the upper hand on Evatt, the solutions to any problems we may encounter and a definitive tick-box summary of "what's stopping us" It's not that simple, so it's hard for football fans to argue/counter argue with limited coaching knowledge, but I suspect 4-3-3 has a whole host of defensive limitations. Worked great getting us out of L2, but encountered problems with it in L1. Players have been recruited with our current formation in mind. It's developed and evolved to put us in the best position we've been in for 3 seasons. The coaching team have talked extensively about tactics, fluidity, playing with a possession based attacking style. Throwing the ball backwards is part of this and is usually an effective way of us keeping hold of the ball to go on to create chances, it's happened a lot this season to good effect. It's risk vs reward which is an effective part of the way we play. The best example of countering your mentality claim, is directly related to this example. Ogbete showed great mental strength to come back from his mistake. He never shied away from receiving the ball, he took on attackers to great effect in his own half and created our first goal. I think this epitomises, along with Santos, Maghoma, Collins (other players who've been questioned), how mentally strong our players actually are. I just think it's really easy to claim what the problems/answers are as a fan without truly understanding the methodology of coaching/managing professionally. And that's not to naively suggest we have no problems and can't be better, of course we can but I trust FV, Evatt and his team to know how to do this better than someone on a fans forum. That game shouldn't be being highlighted for the reasons we aren't top 2. More celebrated for the fact we matched/bettered the champions, have players who are in great form, have players who have answered the critics, players who are back hungry from injury, to get us promoted playing the brand of football that has been so good to watch these last 4 seasons.

Wow, totally changed landscape at bottom with that result

Had some great times at Burnden, but that night. Honestly hairs standing up on the back of my neck thinking about it. It was an absolute bear pit.

He is one of the nicest and funniest people you could ever meet. Loads of us spent lots of time with him. Always good fun. Avoid politics and money !

Can't wait for all the attendnoncery over the coming days.

He’s busy imagining 18000 queue in an orderly fashion in order to be counted as they escape the conflagration; which will wait to take a hold until number 17999 escapes and then burst into flames preventing the escape of number 18000 who just happens to be @victor meldrew for the cuntish pie and pastie comment. The only reason he didn’t manage to escape is because I held him into his seat then ran like fuck to become lucky escapee number 17999.

Dempsey’s performance showed exactly why Maghoma needs to be starting. Best midfield lineup is Sheehan, Maghoma and GT.

See you blowing smoke up Bristol asses on their forum, you are one weird fucker.

It’s a dogshit idea designed to appeal to fucking idiots.

Give over, we won 4-0 you miserable get 😁

Much like if only you weren’t a smart arsed attention seeking fucking idiot

I think people just need to stop analysing every single snippet or piece of information and getting all hysterical when it doesn't transpire how they want it to. Players get injured. Players get delayed in recovery. Managers get grumpy with the press. It's fucking football, professional football and a man's game. Our cunts behave like soccer mums on an under 9s what's app group. Stop being melodramatic fannies, making shit up in your heads and focus your thoughts on beating Stevenagea and not some bizarre conspiracy dreamt up on twitter. Get a fucking grip for crying out loud you bunch of women.

By ‘better business model’ what you actually mean is more money that they’re willing to pump into a loss making L1 football club? There will be no stone left unturned from Sharon with regards to the business model, we’ll be exploring every avenue of how we are more sustainable as a club - it benefits both her and the club to do so. She’s clearly not going to chuck all of her eggs (cash) into our basket, she’s not daft enough to do so. Most businesses in a market that actually makes financial sense would be borrowing money from banks and other lenders in order to invest and improve the performance, loss making football clubs don’t have that option so she’s instead found willing investors with the acceptance that she dilutes her shareholding. I don’t see the problem in that? Clearly we need either to produce kids that we can sell on for a tidy profit (easier said than done and needs material investment in the academy in the first place) or we need the whole ‘moneyball’ buy potential low and hope we sell high to start kicking in for the club to stand on its own two feet, but it’s not something you can just assume in a business model because it’s unknown to an extent (you could make an argument that it’s something you can improve, I’d agree with that). I’d put a lot of money on the club now having a 3-5 year forecast / business model which has varying eventualities and supporting financial options for each. The idea that the ‘Swiss guys’ (aren’t they Nick Luckock’s brother?) would have a better model by chucking more cash at it just puts us back at square one. Bigger losses, more reliant on our owner to pump in cash every year and therefore more likely to go bump and drop down the leagues to start it all again (ring any bells?).

Fuckin ell there would be some late parcel deliveries. He'd spend 10 minutes outside your house fucking about until he finally posted it.

The problem is we might not improve on Evatt, getting rid means we will be starting from scratch, new manager new coach’s, new scout, a shake up of playing staff, new system and style of play and more likely less chance of promotion in year one and a large cash outflow to pay off the old guard. Changing managers is fraught with danger and no guarantee of success… and for all those reasons I’m firmly in the stick with Evatt camp,

Every year they introduce something that damages the game that little bit more Death by a thousand cuts. Just fuck off

If we would have won every game of the season we would have gone up I reckon. 'We drop points against the top 6' -we dropped to many points against the bottom 10' 'Wigan beat us again, we list at blackpool' I honestly think some folk expected us to win every single league game - this is football, it doesn't happen.

It's not that big, I managed to have a pint with @jayjayoghani whilst passing through

Yes good idea. You should look in to being a football coach pal. Your insight into football is clearly brilliant.

Bet you posted similar on the Shrewsbury forum, you fucking oddball.

Little Whitt's pseudonym, that.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/rs5MzzVkdnae4zXN/?mibextid=K35XfP

I think the rule bods could actually break the unbreakable premier league. Clearly out of control as they make it up weekly. Not sure I ever want to get back while it’s under this current guise.

Good day out, Baxter was superb with the saves just after half time. Was in control without being in control if that makes sense. a ground out win with a 7/10 performance. thommason did superbly well for the first goal and a great finish. CJ is so good at late on game management. great race against the bus back to the station ( those that know - know) and a good sing song and drink on the train back. 4 more wins please

Each to their own. Couldn’t give a toss.

Let me introduce you to last seasons 59/59 costed up spreadsheet 🤢

Them were the days

It's like you're chomping at the bit wanting us to fail

The row over this shirt sums up everything that wrong with shit at the moment. 1 Two versions of the shirt 2 The more expensive version costing £125 for a fucking shirt 3 A pointless design change to the flag 4 People saying it is a lesbian colour scheme 5 Joey Barton 6 People getting annoyed because idiots on Twitter say they should. Similar design changes in previous years never created a ripple It is fucking pathetic all round.

If we were in Derby’s position we would undoubtedly sell that out.

I'll join because I live round that way and have done for years I don't need new friends though as I already have 104

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-13207613/Fallen-giants-bring-passion-noise-Pride-Park-Derby-Bolton-stared-abyss-two-proud-clubs-thriving-League-One.html