Bolton News

Bolton Wanderers: One Sloth. Going Cheap.

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Image for Bolton Wanderers: One Sloth. Going Cheap.

The ‘we are a family club’ line starts to grate, and Ivan Klasnic IS the best striker in the world. Apart from Nicklas Bendtner probably.

Morning all. I little weekend round up for you before we head into the excitment of Monday and the release of the fixture list. Not that we can tell you anything other than who we have first, last, on Boxing Day and when we play Burnley. Copyright you see. The npower Championship, the second best league in the world, are as much a stickler for that as the Premier League are.

Don’t worry though, we’ll only be there for a season as far as Owen Coyle is concerned. And why is that? Because we have the men for the job. If you’re in trouble, if no one else can help and, if you can find them on a football field, then you can call on Eagles, Pratley and Mears.

Not exactly the Expendables are they? Or maybe they are.

Described by Owen Coyle as ‘a young, exciting group who are getting better‘ (the three are 26, 27 and 29 respectively), these are the men who have all managed, at one time or another, to get out of the Championship. Of course, he misses out the point that two of the three joined the club and immediately went down with them. (We can’t really blame Mears for that.)

Other quotes from the man whose halo has slipped include:

What we have at Bolton Wanderers is truly unique, it really is. This is a family club and it will be envied up and down the country, so it is important we stay united.’

The fact that one of our players suffered a cardiac arrest showed that the club can rally around its own, but this whole ‘family club’ malarkey is seriously starting to get on my nerves. It isn’t unique, there are plenty of ‘family clubs’ up and down the land, some of them part owned or fully owned by supporters trusts. I fail to see how a club as much in debt as we are, regardless of who we owe the money to, would be envied up and down the land. We have been relegated and one of our longest ever serving players has decided that he didn’t want to stick around and help us get back up, although his family live in the town. That doesn’t smack of a family club. It smacks of a few mercenaries jumping ship.

And answer me this. If we were all supposed to remain united, how is it that after our final home game of the season, no one deigned to apppear and do a lap? That’s more disunited than united. The unity has to come from the club first and the fans will follow, not the other way round. Eleven thousand people have bought season tickets on the promise that the club is everything that the chairman and manager say it is. That is unity from the fans. It would have been nice for the club to have shown the same sort of appreciation.

We were building a team for the Premier League and we want to get it there.’

Then for all that is holy, why have we offered Zat Knight a new contract?

Elsewhere, Ivan Klasnic, the sloth like striker who holds the record for ambling round the pitch looking disinterested for the most consecutive minutes of a game ever, has said that, despite not being selected for the Euros by Croatia, there are not many players of his ability available.

Klasnic is a lethal striker, of that there is no doubt, but his career at Bolton will forever be judged on his inability to get on the end of a pass unless it was played directly to his foot. This isn’t necessarily having a go at Klasnic as we were aware what we were getting when we signed him. But if he is to take this game to any other league, he needs to do a lot more than just hit the ball into the net, which is the best part of his game. Few clubs will want to sign a player who stands around waiting for the ball to come to him. Football doesn’t work like that these days.

And with that, we will leave it. Remember, for the best analysis for the new season’s fixtures, it is best to look at something like the Bolton News as the best you will get from here is that we play them sometime at someplace. Although I’ve still got a couple of days to figure a way round it.

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