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Bolton Wanderers: Rumbling On

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Last Monday becomes next Monday.

Morning all. Another early one for you to digest over your bacon butties and Cornflakes, possibly at the same time. An interesting combination, I’m sure you’ll agree.

You’ll have noticed that we have dropped off a little as the close season takes its deathly grip, but we’ll still attempt to give you an every other day look at Bolton Wanderers through our eyes which, at the time of writing, are watery and bloodshot and still have six hours of work to go.

It’s not even as if the Euros give Bolton fans a look at any of our players as the ones that we have got left all seem to play for minor European countries. That means that we have to live vicariously through those players that used to play for us but now play their trade somewhere else. Of these, there are three. Jonathan Walters played approximately half an hour of football for us and, as he was born on the Wirral, isn’t even technically Irish. Christian Wilhemsson was on loan to us for a short period of time so he doesn’t count either, leaving us with Johan Elmander. But, as Sweden are in England’s group, we want them to fail. All in all, it’s a pretty bad show and shows how far and how fast we have fallen. Eight years ago, we had a player who played for the winning country. Now our best claim to fame is that we had a player who played for England during the qualifiers. And even he is missing the tournament.

Still, at least we have the Zat Knight fiasco to keep us amused. I call it a fiasco, as the defintion of that word could be said to be any of a flop, failure, disaster, ruin, mess, catastrophe, rout, debacle or cock-up. And all of those terms could be a definition of what is happening with Knight at the moment, never mind in the past.

Given a dealine of the beginning of this week, it now turns out that OC will not be sitting down with the former England defender until he himself returns from holiday. Which looks like being next week. Which isn’t this week.

This all leaves me a bit confused. I was of the impression that the manager doesn’t really bother with the contract side of things, so how would sitting down with Knight make any difference. It is another week of pratting around whilst we wait for an answer from a player that most people would gladly send on his way with a hearty never darken these doors again. Almost a month since our relegation, we aren’t sure if he will be staying or not, which means that any plans that we may have for rebuilding the defence have to wait.

Whoever that defence includes the first name on the list, Matt Mills, remains to be seen but the name doesn’t partiularly excite. However, at least it is a name recognisable by some. He has a good track record in the Championship at Reading, and if he did have a falling out with his current boss Nigel Pearson, then Pearson’s face would suggest that it wasn’t the first time that this has happened to him. Leicester will want to be rid of him if he isn’t going to play, meaning a chance to get him on the cheap (which will excite Phil Gartside no end). However, Celtic appear to also be in the running but Celtic could probably bring in the Dagenham Girl Pipers and win the Scottish League next season. We give this a 6/10 on the possibility scale. Simply because we’re bored.

I never saw Chris Thompson play as he was just before my time as a Bolton fan, but it is never nice to hear of a former player dying, especially one so young. A goal every fourth game is a good return for a midfielder, regardless of which division you are in. RIP.

Elsewhere, I have realised that I never got round to giving you the result of the Vital Bolton player of the year. And I’m not doing it now. If I have nothing better to write about over the weekend, you may just find out on Sunday. As it is, I’m out of here. As Zico Kelly would say on Twitter, every hour on the hour, goodnight, godbless, walk the dog, have a boss weekend.

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