Friend of the famous, home of the free speech.
Evening all. Another late one I`m afraid as the Lympics get ever more exciting. When will that elusive gold medal come? Will it be in the BMX? Will it be in the windsurfing? Will it be in beach volleyball?
Well, it won`t be in any of them, as Ireland aren`t in any of them. Still, there`s always the drinking your body weight in alcohol and falling over. Bound to be a shoo in for that.
Anyhoo, with the pre season games coming thick and fast (well done to the kids for their 1-0 win at Chorley this evening. A win, at last), there hasn`t really been a chance to catch up on the news. So, for the sake of expediency, we are going to have a quick look at the best few days and cast a critical eye over it all. We like to call it ‘that thing we do that doesn`t require a lot of thought`.
So, in chronological order:
SORDELL AT THE OLYMPICS
Marvellous Marvin was mentioned in a tweet by Richard Osman, the bloke who sits at the desk and makes up the questions on ‘Pointless` after Team GB had beaten the UAE at Wembley on Sunday. For the uninitiated, as there surely must be some, the object of the exercise in Pointless is to guess the correct answer that the least people gave. So if, in 2015, the question is “Name a member of the GB football team at the 2012 Olympics”, the elongated question setter guesses that the player that the least people would remember would be Sordell. Harsh.
To be fair to Richard, as we are now on first name terms, when I did forward this tweet onto Sordell, the big fellow immediately replied that he thought that Sordell had had a good game. Either that, or he didn`t think that a Bolton fan would take umbrage. As for myself, I think that he is the most famous person I have had a reply from, other than Gordon Burns.
As for Sordell himself, although he was substituted at half time, he had a good enough game, forcing the keeper into a good save. He has now played nearly four times as many minutes for the GB team as he has for Bolton. And we are still keeping score.
NEW KIT
Remember last season and the whole “Back in Black” advertising campaign for the away kit, even though we had never played in black before? Well, this season the club are launching the new away kit at the “Family Fun Day” on August 12th, where you can also take part in the largest team squad photo that the club has ever done. So, if you want to rub shoulders which our current bunch of underachievers, then a week on Sunday is the day for you. And you can do it in your new kit, bought from the club shop for slightly less than fifty quid. Unfortunately, I`ll be working, meaning that banner I`ve been working on will have to wait for the Forest game.
INJURIES
Just how many more injuries can this club get. Is there something in the water or is it when the club physiotherapists use that hammer to test the players reflexes, they are using the wrong size one? Ream, Mills and Knight are all likely to be missing tomorrow night and, whilst we are all banging on about the results meaning not a lot, it would be nice for the central defence to have some time together on the field. Sam Ricketts can play there, but the faster we get to the actual season, the more likely it is that someone will be playing out of place or a second choice will be there. LCY, Eagles and N`Gog are also doubts for tomorrow night.
Last season`s efforts by the club doctors, despite the saving of Fabrice Muamba`s life, didn`t shine a golden light on the backroom staff, with the injuries piling up like a student`s dirty washing. While it may be good to get them out of the way before the season starts, this is yet another hangover from last season that we can do without, thank you very much.
BENIK AFOBE
We know that strikers are needed asap, with N`Gog injured, Sordell at the Lympics and Tom Eaves not necessarily trusted enough to make the step up this season (he has played the past two reserve games). So, it is natural that the manager would look to the loan market and not a great shock that with the good relationship that we have with Mr Vinegar and The Arse, we should enquire about one of their young strikers. Whether Afobe is the answer is another matter. He has scored goals for the young England sides that he has played in, but when he was at first Huddersfield and then Reading, the goals didn`t exactly rain in. He has pace and height, something that the other strikers don`t, and is young enough to get better. However, he is no Daniel Sturridge (or, for that matter, Jack Wilshere). According to Arse fans, he has good movement and positioning, but his finishing is dire, and it is the finishing that we need. We have the pace (Sordell) and the positioning and dire finishing (N`Gog) already. We got a pacy youngster on loan last season in Kakuta and then failed to use him for whatever reason. I`m concerned that Afobe will end up not scoring, being stuck on the bench and then sent back to Islington in January. We need someone who has scored goals at this level, not an untried. We have enough of them already.
CARLOS SANCHEZ
My head hurts. We are signing him. We aren`t signing him. We don`t know where he is. We know where he is but we don`t know who is agent is. We know who his agent is, but we can`t get hold of him.
Anyway, it now turns out that we have had a breakthrough in the effort to sign “The Rock”. But that breakthrough may just be that we finally have his phone number and have left a message on his voicemail. I`ll hold off for the time being, if it`s all the same with you. It all has the smell of a cut price Rivaldo.
CLUB USE TENUOUS LINK TO OLYMPICS
Hey, I`m a Team GB fan. I was ecstatic when Rebecca Adlington won bronze in the swimming, jumped up and down on the works couch as Lizzie Armitstead almost stole gold in the cycling and cried a silent tear at the mens gymnasts being denied a silver by those dishonourable Japanese. And no one is a bigger fan than me when it comes to the horsey set.
OK, that last one may be a fib. But I had to take a step back when the fact that one of the horses that had been ridden to Olympic silver was owned by Eddie Davies appeared on the club twitter feed and website, as if we had had a hand in the success. Eddie Davies may be the owner of Bolton Wanderers, but I see no link between that and the fact that one of his horses won a medal. If he had ridden the nag, then maybe. What`s next? Are we going to vicariously celebrate when SKD`s donkeys win a derby on Blackpool beach? A desperate and cynical ploy by the club to try and trade on someone else`s success, in my opinion.
This may sound, once again, that I am having a go at the club. And you`d be right. I support the team on the pitch, but have the right to criticise when I see fit. I don`t like the way that the club, my club, is run. So, I can support the team and not support the club, just like the fans from clubs as far apart as Stretford and Portsmouth. This tweet from the chairman can be seen by some as a rallying cry. But to me, it is a desperate call from a man who is under a lot more pressure than he would like. It still gets me how he can draw the wage that he does whilst allowing staff to be made redundant. I know that he is director, and that historically they get paid more. But if this club was the family club that it purports to be, then we should be trying to keep as much of the family together as we can. I`m not saying that Gartside should go (more than a season in the Championship may take care of that anyway), but there has to be some circumspection as to where we have gone under his leadership. Unfortunately, from what I have seen, there are those who lap up everything that he says simply because he is Bolton`s chairman, rather than looking at the bare facts. Relegation, debt, Megson. Those three things alone used to get you put in the stocks in front of Bolton Town Hall.
Asking for blind loyalty is asking for too much after the past season and a half. Player’s wives having a go at fans, the chairman having a go at fans, insipid displays, poor results, an assumption that we would stay up plainly proved wrong? Why should the fans give that loyalty? I’ll pay my money and support the team, but asking me to overlook what is wrong at T’Reebok because it is detrimental to the club? That insults my intelligence.
There are things that are right with the club, especially when you see players like Riley and Vela coming through. And I have no truck with the amount of people picking up season tickets, and would have done the same if it were possible. But it is the right of each and every fan to give their opinion on the team and players. And anyone who thinks that that isn’t true support knows nothing about football.
And, on that downbeat note, I would once again point you in the way of the Fantasy League in the article before. Al will be here tomorrow with a Morecambe preview and I`ll be back, actually during the day, on Thursday to discuss our 2-0 win.
Until then, remember a Beth Tweddle isn`t just for Christmas.