paulhanley

That's all good stuff to hear but we just need rid a few more than those out of contract to create the culture change we so plainly require and get the required number of different players in to the mix to tip the balance. We also need to sell a few to balance budgets a bit.

Intensely dislike him. Everything wrong about modern day football commentators his embodied in him.

We all want a thorough shake up. We can give free transfers to the likes of Santos and Jones. There are also the returning loanees in the shape of Matete, Murphy and Etete. That's five slots - but to make the changes in the depth we need I think we need eight or nine. Within those additions we need to be adding physique, pace and leadership/character. The question therefore becomes how we create further space for new arrivals. To be saleable they need to be proper assets who other clubs will covet but who we won't miss. That sounds like a contradiction in terms but given Evatt's predeliction for signing the same type of player over and over there are possibilities. We aren't going to sell Randall given how soon he is with us. Thus the logic is that Sheehan has to be sold. As a full current Welsh international you'd have to think there'd be bidders. However he is now 30 so you are probably talking about £200-£350K We have to sell Nlundulu even if it's for 20p. Victor would have been top of this list had he been fit Morley is of a much younger vintage than Sheehan and having impressed at Wycombe he would fetch a few bob. Whether we sell both is a different matter. Would there be any takers for Thomason? I doubt it at Championship level. Schon is yet another player of the Evatt template, ill suited to League 1 football. There would surely be teams on the continent who would consider him as a recruit even if not quite at the price Evatt paid. McAtee is probably too early in to his deal to sell. I do think with him he is one of those players who only thrives in certain systems/teams. CMG is hard to assess - he's never fit. Which would make him hard to sell! As a full Norn Irish international there'd be interest in Toal and we certainly need more of a mixture of varieties of central defenders. I think we will successfully sell a few. Whether it is soon enough in the window to create space for Schumacher's new recruits in bulk who knows.

Trouble is we need two of each really so we have back ups of that type when one gets injured.

Good interview. He sees what we see and does not wear the Evatt blinkers. Change this summer, change next season. We are going to be toughening up at last.

Big changes required this summer and as dismal as these last three results have been I am looking forward to our first post Evatt/Markham transfer window. The only thing you can say about losing six in eight is that Wigan away was not one of them.

Was that the one when Nat dropped a load of senior players and fielded the kids and we won out of the blue?

If you are saying we have got no cunts but we need double the amount of cunts to cover when a cunt gets injured or suspended then I would agree. Summer 2025 needs to be the summer when cuntishness returns to the BWFC squad.

I was rooting for Justin Rose but when the likes of McIlroy and DeChambeau get on the charge he just doesn't have that extra gear. Surely McIlroy won't blow this again.

The scary thing is we need to tighten the defence as well. Look at the goals conceded column. We really are some way off were we need to be in every department.

When Rioch came to Bolton in 1992 we won three of our first give games then drew 1 and lost 5 of the next six. A very similar thing happened when Big Sam arrived in 1999. It is very early days and SS has his first transfer window upcoming. I would bet good money that he thinks the same as us in terms of the flaws we have been seeing week in and out for a considerable period now. I had lost patience with Evatt. I have loads of it for SS. He has one hell of a job on unpicking the mess Evatt left and he needs to turn us from flat track bullies in to a far meaner machine. I think he will do it.

This has been the case for years now. No physicality, no pace, no on-pitch leadership. Basic stuff. I think SS knows this. The change has to be root and branch and I suspect we will open to reasonable bids for a good few of those under contract.

For those slagging off SS, you are barking up the wrong tree. We can only even get in to the foothills of judging the guy after he has had a transfer window. He has been dealt a talented but very one-dimensional squad. I think he is cut from a very different cloth to Evatt and we will start seeing that from the soon in to next season. None of that is consolation to the 3000 who turned out today and watched a lame performance from the current squad. There are one or two on run-down period in there. They know they are going.

In the 1990s it was rare to see more than five new signings in a summer and it was often less than that. Nowadays it is common to see anything between 7 and 10. Or more. Turnover is quicker. Change is quicker.

For those who are old enough to remember the sequence of events in the early 1990s at BWFC, we must hope that this is the equivalent of the end of 91/2 with 92/3 to follow. I do think SS is going to toughen this lot up a lot. Soft as shit.

Pie men scrawping their way to safety point by point. If (as seems more likely than not) we stay down its on again v them next year. One swallow does not make a summer. A chance to double the cunts.

Probably best to say they were all within a 15 mile radius of each other than to use that dreadful phrase.

I think it was the rags, Bolton, Bury, Wigan that season.

I think Gethin leaves on a free as well. After that Sheehan could be sold, we need to sell Vic and will probably do so at a loss. SS clearly does not particularly like Lolos. And of course there are loanees in that squad who will return to their parent clubs (Murphy, Etete, Matete).

I am completely torn between knowing this club has to be in the Championship and the knowledge that we are in no fit shape and even with a pre-season full of signings and a good manager we would be starting from a low base at the higher level following any play off success. This is a lop-sided squad, ill constructed by a footballing idealogue. Lots of quality but all of a similar variety. I am really looking forward to seeing what SS has in mind this summer to rectify the situation. The pragmatist in me wants it to be a full summer minus the delay of play offs leading to us hitting the ground running in August and having a serious tilt at the automatics in 25/6. I am sure I am not the only one with these mixed feelings looking ahead to the next four months.

Aside from the frustration of the actual match this is our seventh home defeat of the season. It isn't feeling like promotion tackle to me. A lot needs doing to this squad. SS is the man for the job with help from Fergal Sharkey

Ian Greaves was the first I remember and remains one of the best. It was great that Big Sam them came along from the Greaves era and the latter speaks very warmly about the former in his book. Bruce Rioch is the other great in my time. I fell out with Colin Todd in the same way I ended up falling out with Evatt. It seemed all to be about the aesthetics rather than the results. Weird given his 96/7 team could fight as well as play. Stan Anderson and George Mulhall in the 80s were mistakes. John McGovern and Phil Neal tried very, very hard for BWFC but you wonder what the fascination with employing player managers was by the boards at the time. Coyle got off to a great start but proved one-dimensional and Freedman/Lennon were fighting against the odds with the financial plight of the club. Sammy Lee was a total disaster and the wrong appointment. Mention must be made of Phil Parkinson in later days. It was not pretty but he got us a promotion and acted with dignity through those dog-days of financial ruin.

I was reminded earlier by a relative what I said after I saw the result of the first Rugby League Super League game of the season back in Feb: Wigan 0 Leigh 1 with a drop goal in added time. "I bet Bolton do not do that in the football in March".

The only ref who ever seemed to be a lucky charm for us. He was never biased but we always seemed to win when he was officiating.