Benny Bear

"non-negotiables" "Starting work immediately" "Difficult negotiations" "We've got our man" and of course the perrenial favourite "Sleeping giant" and an old favourite "Club shop is open for your purchases" no sorry that was the previous administration.

I believe it works something like this. The coach or manager (in discussion with Sporting Director) says something like "We need a speedy left sided midfielder who is capable of putting tackles in". In other words they set a criteria. The Sporting Director looks ta the data that fits that criteria and finds a few players, who they then go and watch etc. The coach the works with those players who have been acquired. It is a more targetted approach. It saves a lot of pointless scouting here, their and everywhere and managers who spend alot of their time on wasted journeys watching players who are nowhere near what they need. It works at Brentford - where they uncovered a lot of quality players.

Now i can start breathing again. Paul Appleton's statement reads like he understands what is to be a Bolton Wanderers supporter, some of us for a very long time. Thank you.

I remember Paul Fletcher presenting the medals when we won a football tournament at Turton School around 1971. I thought i'll never wash that hand again - i think it lasted until i got to the changing rooms. My Dad taught him at Smithills school.

In the 70's, Leeds Utd had a whole team who could handle themselves / dish it out, one to eleven. 1970 fa cup final. Fantastic. Just watch it on you-tube. Individual masters: Michael Brown, the dirtiest, most pointless player. Not even good. Some of the other hard men were good players Bremner, Souness, Dave Mackay etc. He wasn't.

Oztumer, very good player. Style is similar to the equally small, Barry Bannon. We need a creative midfielder who can score. My number one choice for a signing. Let's hope.

Delighted that Craig Noone has signed. As a former coach of Kirkby Boys football team, I've always had the ambition that a Kirkby Boy would play for the Wanderers.

If my memory serves me correctly, yes we wore all white with red numbers. We were very poor at the time and as is often the case, keepers don't look good in poor sides. Difficult times. He played a lot of games for Shrewsbury and so I'm sure he must have been decent. Hopefully their fans saw the best of him. RIP.

First half we were too slow and ponderous - no movement. We have started too many first halves poorly. We have been far too cautious and respectful of the opposition. There wasn't a tackle in the first half that was worthy of the name. We need to come out all guns blazing. The teams we've seen so far play expansive games with players playing wide and spread out. They gamble on the ability of their players. We are trying to play a very compact tight game - the opposite. The defending for both goals was atrocious. In fact there was more atrocious defending when they didn't, but should have, scored. Andre Wisdom waltzed through without anyone laying a hand on him. We had three at the back and two defensive midfielders sitting right next to them. Five players in a small area leaves too much space in the rest of the field. We needed another midfielder further up the pitch. Huddlestone controlled the game without breaking into a sweat! He needed to hounded whenever he thought about touching the ball. Pratley is not a scapegoat, he is playing very poorly. He runs about lot but achieves nothing. His first touch is very poor that it takes him off in the wrong direction or he loses the ball. We need some creativity in that position. I would much prefer Buckley there at the moment. Cullen had no movement ahead of him and so passes forward were always going to be difficult, but he was sitting to deep with Karacan. Armstrong did himself no favours and ALF showed that he didn't like being sub when he got on. Derby worked out that our method of attack was to get the ball to Morais. They cut this out very quickly. This should have left more space on the left - we didn't use it. Robinson might have been a better bet to exploit that width once we were losing. We are going to be less talented than many of the teams we play so we need to make up for that by enthusiasm, aggression and a high pace game. Today we had very little of it. Thank goodness we've got another game on Tuesday!

Don't know Burke that well, but Josh Cullen was the best player I saw last year (apart from all of our players of course.) Glad we've got him.

My problem with Megson was the deep defending. By the end we were defending so deep that even the 5ft 71/2 inch Stephen Hunt was heading in goals on the goal line! Our defence was almost defending inside the goal. Any mistake so deep causes a goal i.e. no time to recover. Rubbish.

Definitely all four for me. I was 17 in 1977. For the FA cup tie, away, someone told me to get the train to Seven Sisters and walk from there. It was miles (or seemed like it). Took me ages. The league game at Bolton was won by Roy Greaves in the last minute (I think). My cousins had a habit of leaving early (to avoid traffic blah, blah, blah.) Earlier in the game Neil McNab scored for Spurs but it was disallowed - in all the noise and mayhem, we took the free kick quickly and the game carried on. My cousins thought the goal stood and so when they left early were convinced we had lost 0-1. We score and win 1-0. They hear the result on the car radio and think it is a mistake. Serves you right for leaving early! I remember Leeds looking like a quality side.

I like the way Ken doesn't hide. If there is something to be said, he says it. His column is always a good read, sometimes unfortunately do to difficult situations. He doesn't hide like the previous administration did - for whatever reason. We wouldn't have a club without him.

Josh Cullen would be a top signing for a year. I thought he was the best player who played against us last season.

Joe Hart reminds me of Ben Amos. If the shot is on target - it goes in! Craig Gordon isn't any better.