Just about all of the other threads are very understandably very negative and that's my over-riding emotion since Saturday too. What a bunch of bottlers.

Any year Bolton Wanderers spend out of the top two divisions is a year too long. We are now going to spend a sixth consecutive season in the lower divisions. Slowly but surely we're escalating towards the full decade we endured in the 80s and early 90s. 

However ... taking the long view, are there reasons why a further year in League 1 might prove to have been the right thing? 

1. This team bottles big games. In the Championship there are big games far more often. Quite apart from debating the balance of the squad and the quality in the side they simply seem to lack to the big game mentality. The Championship would surely have chewed up and spat out our lily-livered playing staff. 

2. Ipswich are an outlier. It's not often promoted teams thrive at tier 2 these days. You have to get a foothold and scrap your way to safety. That would be a problem linked to (1) but how many of the current squad can we honestly say are Championship ready in terms of playing standard alone? Going back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, we would not have been ready for tier 2 with a forward line of Storer/Philliskirk/Reeves - as much as they did good things for us. However we were ready with Walker/McGinlay/Lee. Things sometimes just need to evolve a bit more before they align. 

3. There are scores to settle in League 1. We still want that win at Bloomfield Road (hopefully while preserving our own long unbeaten home run against the orange wankers). Then there is Wigan. That run of misfortune v them has to stop. Next season we get at least two more shots at it. I recall the double over Wigan in 92/3 when Bruce got us promoted. It felt like the right way to be saying goodbye to them (for what proved to be more than a decade).  A much lesser local issue but Stockport fans are a mouthy lot and like to point out they've never lost at the Reebok. Be nice to sort that. 

4. Combining the themes of derby matches and whether we were Championship ready this year - I'm not so sure I'd have fancied having to play Burnley, Blackburn and PNE with this present lot. It could have been carnage.

Hopefully we will come to view our failure this season as a necessary evil as we develop/evolve further so that when we do hit the Championship we are properly equipped.

 

Very well said.

30 minutes ago, paulhanley said:

1. This team bottles big games. In the Championship there are big games far more often. Quite apart from debating the balance of the squad and the quality in the side they simply seem to lack to the big game mentality. The Championship would surely have chewed up and spat out our lily-livered playing staff. 

aye, convincing myself that if we can address those issues with new additions and turn that into a squad that can get promoted, we'd be in better shape for a crack at the championship

if this current lot went up and that issue wasn't addressed, we'd get bummed senseless most weeks, probably

I've come round to the idea that going up this year with the current set up could have been a shit show.

It's a consolation of sorts, and I'm clinging to it!

Might as well give up if its too tough in the division above.

Fold the club.

Build a car park for the railway station on the land.

 

In fact, we should contrive to get relegated this season, so that next year will be less competetive.

 

Its like finding out your missus has been humping your best mate, and consoling yourself with teh fact you like Microwave meals for one.

Some of them M&S ones are decent to be fair

1 minute ago, ZiggyStardust said:

Its like finding out your missus has been humping your best mate, and consoling yourself with teh fact you like Microwave meals for one.

or it wasn't working out and you end up with a better missus.

and best mate.

Yes the Oxford squad is far superior to ours maybe they were ready and we're not, much like we were not ready for the premier league when we beat Preston 

1 minute ago, Hoppy said:

Yes the Oxford squad is far superior to ours maybe they were ready and we're not, much like we were not ready for the premier league when we beat Preston 

It'll be  bleak for Oxford next year, but maybe their fans will enjoy it because they see it as above their level (and Buckingham may have the nous to do ok for them).

This one feels more to me like missing out on the play-offs under Freedman, although finances and poor appointments meant that ended up a shit show anyway.

And stop pissing on my one crumb of comfort 😁

10 minutes ago, gonzo said:

Some of them M&S ones are decent to be fair

Do they still do the gastro pub range?

I used to like the moussaka one, tbh i did add a few chips on the side and maybe something healthy like tenderstem broccoli for example.

(And i reckon we would have given some of em a game).

All very well but unless the manager addresses his weaknesses I can’t see any evolving going on 

29 minutes ago, Hoppy said:

Yes the Oxford squad is far superior to ours maybe they were ready and we're not, much like we were not ready for the premier league when we beat Preston 

Oxford are definitely going back down, they did fantastic to beat us and Posh but they are the worst team to go into the championship for ages.

The squad when we beat PNE contained Jussi, Bergsson, Gardner, Charlton, Nolan, Frandsen, Holdsworth, Elliot, Whitlow, Ricketts, Warhurst.  We always had a chance of competing, especially with a top manager.

The squad we have now is nowhere near being able to compete in the championship.

Course I was desperate to go up and enjoy the ride but my main hope was that we'd improve more than Pompey and Derby to finish above them, and then maybe Plymouth or whoever's turn it is to get a points deduction.  We won't find out, but in an ideal world we get a better manager by the time we are in the championship, and some better players.

I was thinking about the season after the Tranmere fiasco today... I recall standing on the away terrace at Hull with maybe 500 whites watching at Philliskirk & Co and there was nothing there, we were totally washed out. We soldiered on but I also remember saying to my pal "we need a spark to light the blue touch paper" as we were going backwards. This was a lost season in my view (except for the lucky signing of Andy Walker)... one year later I was back at Hull with thousands of madmen invading the pitch going up with only 10 men... whatever needs to be done has to happen soon or it's two years in this poor league. We can still get out of this next year.

Not a bad way of looking at it.

Worth pointing out that Plymouth and Sheffield Wednesday finished just above the relegation places.

A lot of ifs there Paul. 

The aim is to get promoted. 

Not worry too much about whether the squad is capable of holding its own.

Chances are that it would be strengthened, and would look different anyway.

The question over Evatt is a separate debate, but by hook or by crook, we just have to get up.

A bolton fan obsessed with blackpool and wigan depresses me

I don't get this "we get promoted when we're ready for the next division mentality", you try and get promoted as quick as possible and improve the squad to compete at the next level.

But I did like the motivational message of what we could do next season paulhanley. Kind of an "if carlsberg did 4th seasons in div 3"

24 minutes ago, Stig said:

I don't get this "we get promoted when we're ready for the next division mentality", you try and get promoted as quick as possible and improve the squad to compete at the next level.

But I did like the motivational message of what we could do next season paulhanley. Kind of an "if carlsberg did 4th seasons in div 3"

Correct it’s bollocks. We were ready this season and last season.

I understand people using it as a coping mechanism but it’s re writing history.

4 hours ago, paulhanley said:

Just about all of the other threads are very understandably very negative and that's my over-riding emotion since Saturday too. What a bunch of bottlers.

Any year Bolton Wanderers spend out of the top two divisions is a year too long. We are now going to spend a sixth consecutive season in the lower divisions. Slowly but surely we're escalating towards the full decade we endured in the 80s and early 90s. 

However ... taking the long view, are there reasons why a further year in League 1 might prove to have been the right thing? 

1. This team bottles big games. In the Championship there are big games far more often. Quite apart from debating the balance of the squad and the quality in the side they simply seem to lack to the big game mentality. The Championship would surely have chewed up and spat out our lily-livered playing staff. 

2. Ipswich are an outlier. It's not often promoted teams thrive at tier 2 these days. You have to get a foothold and scrap your way to safety. That would be a problem linked to (1) but how many of the current squad can we honestly say are Championship ready in terms of playing standard alone? Going back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, we would not have been ready for tier 2 with a forward line of Storer/Philliskirk/Reeves - as much as they did good things for us. However we were ready with Walker/McGinlay/Lee. Things sometimes just need to evolve a bit more before they align. 

3. There are scores to settle in League 1. We still want that win at Bloomfield Road (hopefully while preserving our own long unbeaten home run against the orange wankers). Then there is Wigan. That run of misfortune v them has to stop. Next season we get at least two more shots at it. I recall the double over Wigan in 92/3 when Bruce got us promoted. It felt like the right way to be saying goodbye to them (for what proved to be more than a decade).  A much lesser local issue but Stockport fans are a mouthy lot and like to point out they've never lost at the Reebok. Be nice to sort that. 

4. Combining the themes of derby matches and whether we were Championship ready this year - I'm not so sure I'd have fancied having to play Burnley, Blackburn and PNE with this present lot. It could have been carnage.

Hopefully we will come to view our failure this season as a necessary evil as we develop/evolve further so that when we do hit the Championship we are properly equipped.

 

Wow , that is an awful lot of sense

4 hours ago, paulhanley said:

Just about all of the other threads are very understandably very negative and that's my over-riding emotion since Saturday too. What a bunch of bottlers.

Any year Bolton Wanderers spend out of the top two divisions is a year too long. We are now going to spend a sixth consecutive season in the lower divisions. Slowly but surely we're escalating towards the full decade we endured in the 80s and early 90s. 

However ... taking the long view, are there reasons why a further year in League 1 might prove to have been the right thing? 

1. This team bottles big games. In the Championship there are big games far more often. Quite apart from debating the balance of the squad and the quality in the side they simply seem to lack to the big game mentality. The Championship would surely have chewed up and spat out our lily-livered playing staff. 

2. Ipswich are an outlier. It's not often promoted teams thrive at tier 2 these days. You have to get a foothold and scrap your way to safety. That would be a problem linked to (1) but how many of the current squad can we honestly say are Championship ready in terms of playing standard alone? Going back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, we would not have been ready for tier 2 with a forward line of Storer/Philliskirk/Reeves - as much as they did good things for us. However we were ready with Walker/McGinlay/Lee. Things sometimes just need to evolve a bit more before they align. 

3. There are scores to settle in League 1. We still want that win at Bloomfield Road (hopefully while preserving our own long unbeaten home run against the orange wankers). Then there is Wigan. That run of misfortune v them has to stop. Next season we get at least two more shots at it. I recall the double over Wigan in 92/3 when Bruce got us promoted. It felt like the right way to be saying goodbye to them (for what proved to be more than a decade).  A much lesser local issue but Stockport fans are a mouthy lot and like to point out they've never lost at the Reebok. Be nice to sort that. 

4. Combining the themes of derby matches and whether we were Championship ready this year - I'm not so sure I'd have fancied having to play Burnley, Blackburn and PNE with this present lot. It could have been carnage.

Hopefully we will come to view our failure this season as a necessary evil as we develop/evolve further so that when we do hit the Championship we are properly equipped.

 

One of the most depressing things about Saturday is having to play Wigan and Blackpool again (and Barnsley, fucking Barnsley 🤦‍♂️).

If we think we aren't ready for promotion, we may as well not bother.

Honestly, I have to disagree with most of this. It was our biggest opportunity to progress to the next level (not just in terms of league) possibly since we dropped out of the PL.

Seems an absolutely huge opportunity missed, for myriad reasons.

Nobody knows what the financial situation will be next year so we don’t know what the manager will be working with.

I voted stay because Evatt has so many advantages over anyone else brought in, especially having been an integral part of the management team that brought us back from the edge.

However, if we have to sell players and work on a shoestring budget, there may be others better equipped.

I don’t subscribe to a lot of the armchair manager bullshit being bandied about as ultimately it was the player’s performances that let us down, but I do think that Evatt’s investment in and support for the squad, especially the younger players who are still developing and are likely to stay with us may be crucial next season - particularly if we are now totally skint.

I personally don't buy into the whole "we'll struggle in the championship, not ready for it" etc. We'll never know how ready we are until we get there and we can't plan perfectly for when we do, that's just part of the process.

However, I agree, there's so much we can and have to improve upon in this hell hole of a league if we want to get out. 

We struggle at tight, in your face teams, we don't win against any of the top 6, we don't win against our rival teams. It's remarkable we even got 87 points in the end.

Brutally and honestly, we simply have to be a harder team to beat. I don't think that lies with our ability, we've got that. But, what some of us have been saying for years, is that we are still not ruthless enough in defence or attack.

When we play well, it can take a lot of chances for us to convert, most often we could have converted double what we did. And we will still concede a soft goal to give the opposition a chance to get sometning.

When we play shit, we do shit, we concede even more and then won't score/miss big chances and get nothing from the game.

What I'm saying, is we have to play 9/10 to get the 3 points, most times. However, when we don't play well or don't get it our way, we hardly ever get the 3 points. 

To me that's the small percentages that have stopped us these past 2 years.

Derby and Pompey won a lot of games despite playing poorly. Do you think we would have gotten a point like Pompey did, when they came to our place, packed to the rafters, taking on a siege? Absolutely not, that's the difference to me.

The Barnsley first leg to me is a blueprint. Mixing it up, being unpredictable and doing what it takes to win ugly. You cannot get promoted otherwise. 

We also have to recognise that our players are league 1 players and are limited to an extent. Look at the Oxford game, they pressed us, but we couldn't play through it, we were too slow, too many touches, no bravery.

A championship team would have played through that no problem. 

We've got to adapt to the league that we're in, and after 3 years it appears that we have still not done.

Going forward, I'd like to see us take on a hybrid approach. Playing the great football that we know we are capable of. But also having that flexibility to change formation, personnel and the style, to maybe be a bit more direct/unpredictable, take shots from range, play behind the channels. 

Go into a 2nd half where we are struggling 0-0 for example away at a tough physical team and change it up, surprise them with wingers and full backs with 4 at the back. Their prep would go out of the window and our players of much higher quality could really damage them. Not just same Bolton, 5 at the back, play with wing backs etc.

Anyone remember the Northampton away game? We played the 2nd half completely with 10 men, but changed to 4 at the back, had wingers, mendes gomes was terrorising them from out wide.

Look at Oxford, they learnt from the 5-0 and played us perfectly to a fiddle, completely nullified us, due to our predictability.

That is what I want to see, I know Evatt is much more equipped tactically, but this is what I see from the outside in, we have to do something different next season.

Edited May 21, 20242 yr by Lostock Whites

I remember thinking after the Blackpool debacle a few years ago.

Phew, I'm glad we are not in the playoffs.

We are not ready to go up.

Give Freedman a chance to build, and Davies a year to sort the finances out, and we will be stronger this time next year.

This time next year Rodney.

 

You go up when you get the chance. Because you may not get that chance again.

 

37 minutes ago, ZiggyStardust said:

I remember thinking after the Blackpool debacle a few years ago.

Phew, I'm glad we are not in the playoffs.

We are not ready to go up.

Give Freedman a chance to build, and Davies a year to sort the finances out, and we will be stronger this time next year.

This time next year Rodney.

 

You go up when you get the chance. Because you may not get that chance again.

 

I was the same. Obviously wanted us to get up, but dreaded what a season in the prem under Freedman would look like.

In reality, the money could have saved us from the disasters that came after.

And we'd never have really appreciated that (and I'd have been moaning like fuck about Freedman 😁)

The old adage, “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” can be bastardised perfectly to fit this situation.

Nobody can be thankful we fucked up on Saturday just because we may have not been ready.