Bolton came up with a long overdue league win as they comfortably saw off bottom side Crewe.
Wanderers made a few changes from Sunday’s Cup tie, with Amadou Bakayoko starting up front, while Josh Sheehan and Will Aimson came in for George Thomason and Alex Baptiste. We were the better team in the first half, but a little bit pedestrian. All but one of the chances went our way, but we barely troubled Crewe goalkeeper Dave Richards and pockets of the home support were disgruntled, especially as passages of play were often finding their way back to Joel Dixon, who was probably as incisive a passer of any of the outfield players.
After the break, we managed to step things up a little, and a poor Crewe side who were there for the taking were finally breached. Bakayoko fought tooth and nail to bundle a ball over the line, Richards ended up fouling him and we were given the penalty, which Josh Sheehan put away. Four minutes later Bakayoko turned goalscorer when Elias Kachunga’s ball across the box was turned in by Bakayoko and despite our leaky, accident-prone defence, it did seem as though we had the match wrapped up. And that’s how it largely turned out, as we comfortably saw out the remaining 35 minutes, Joel Dixon was called into action a couple of times as Crewe finally posed some problems, while Madger Gomes hit the woodwork late on which nearly made things nervy.
But Bolton have a much needed win which takes them back into the top half for now. While it’s a game that we should be winning, it’ll nonetheless calm people down. It was also good to see Xavier Amaechi get a late cameo to complete his comeback from injury, he looked bright but there wasn’t much time to judge him.