Bolton Match Thread

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It's amazing how 1 defeat causes sections of our fans to start sharpening the knives.

Think we all predicted it would be a lifeless affair (no idea why?), but disappointing as we appeared to create better chances whilst not being the better team. But they bought in a 4million pound striker and he was the difference. Time to dust ourselves down and prepare for the next game.
 
Miketyson2007 said:
Lesson dont tinker every week
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A bit of an odd comment. CP only made two changes:
1) Bring back Seaborne after illness to LB, where he is our best option until Wiggins returns, enabling Solly to switch to his best position and Wilson to RM where he does everything Pritchard does, but better. If you didn't want those changes made you are 1 in 1000.
2) Replacing Hulse with Kermorgant. Not such a necessary change, but most supporters want Kermorgant and Haynes in the team, and Hulse deserves a rest with the holiday program coming up. He is no spring chicken and takes a battering every week.

Neither of those changes contributed to our losing. The problems lie elsewhere.

Funny, because a frequent observation on CP, even when we were on a roll last season, is that he always stuck with the same team. I think he is less inclined to tinker than most managers, but he has been hit by lots of injuries and is having to try and paper over the fact that we have no effective midfield by trying dfferent combos. This last is not tinkering with something that works but trying to patch up something that has never worked since Hollands, Stephens and Jackson were in their pomp, before Stephens and Jacskon got injured and Hollands got triplified. That was actually quite a short period at the beginning of last season. Ever since we have been patching things up with mediocre or half-fit midfield players and relying on the defence and strikers to see us through.
 
I'm with MikeTyson.

I'd like to see BWP come back. I know he has his problems, but I'm sick to death of seeing Ricardo Fuller refusing to pass the ball, Hulse missing out on every single header and failing to score the simplest of chances and Danny Haynes pulling up injured just when he starts to get a run in the side (as much as I do rate him).

BWP fired us into this league, scored a decent goal against Leicester, had a perfectly legitimate goal chalked out against Palace, and yet was dropped after only a handful of games. He's not the type of player who will offer anything for the last 10 minutes of a game, he's a 90minute player - he's at his best when wandering around the pitch, not doing much, then pop up into the box and put the ball in the back of the net.
 
Tewkesbury Addick said:
I'd still like to see the odd strategic substitution though...
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Then you will be heartened by this quote from CP on the OS tonight.

“We were beaten by a player that came on and made the difference and I suppose you look for your substitutes to make a difference."

Actually I am not a great enthusiast for subs myself. I think the disruption plus the time it takes a sub to adjust to the pace of the game can often have negative effects. But we are a special case at the moment because we are playing several players who clearly cannot last 90 minutes effectively because of age, or recent illness or injury, plus those we have to wrap in cotton-wool because they don't belong to us.

It was ironic that the one occasion CP did go mad and throw on three unforced subs (one as early as half-time) we then got an injury and had to finish with 10 men. But that was going from one extreme to another. Surely CP is not still waking up in the night in a cold sweat about that? Can't he put that behind him and "move on"? Perhaps the above quote suggests he is?
 
Miketyson2007 said:
BWP is the striker that our opponents fear simple as that
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I wouldn't be averse to giving BWP a run, but until we can improve our midfield I don't know if he would do any better than the others. But what I would like to know is, if CP played him instead of someone else, wouldn't that constitute "tinkering"?
 
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