Bolton News

BWFC: Genesis – B.W. (Before Wanderers)

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Could this be luck? Or pure brilliance?

I thought a little article about my perspective of Dougie might be an interesting read. Recently there was comments flowing about managers and if some people are still undecided on if they think Dougie is the man for the job. Being a reader of this site for a number of years, I finally made a comment on what I thought about Dougie when things were not going our way. There was a lot of tension around Dougie and his credentials. (Who was this Crystal Palcae fan who told you lot about Dougie being sacked?) The majority of my comments at the time were largely the same as this article, based on his career at Palace, as Dougie had only been in charge for a couple of weeks. I had an incline of what to expect from this young manager. So I thought it would be good idea to do my first guest article on this topic now that were in the playoffs.

I make no apologies but I could not help but admire the guy from the moment he stepped in.
I think we can all agree Coyle was just not working and a replacement was needed fast, I think it was a good idea to give Owen the amount of games needed, I personally think if you want to change a manager, either make the decision at the beginning of a season ,so a new manager can truly make an impact on a squad, but considering the nature of which we were relegated and the amount of important players injured, I can understand the reasoning to let Coyle try and change the squads fortunes around.

When Jimmy Philips took over as caretaker, I really wanted him to be given the role permanently like allot of other fans, although it is literally impossible to tell how his tenure would of worked out, when in three matches; we won one, drawn one and lost one. But that indecisiveness became a none issue when I found out Dougie was going to be appointed.

I knew quite a bit about Dougie. His career at palace has been over 20 years although not continuous, as a player, youth/reserve couch whilst at the same time continuing his playing career. He became assistant manager to Paul Hart helping them survive the drop whilst the club was going into administration. He kept his role as assistant manager through to the next appointment, then took over as caretaker manager with the failure of George Burley and once again was instrumental in Palace staying afloat.

He then took on the manager role permanently, and utilized some extremely fantastic young players who he had a hand in nurturing when he was the reserve manager. They have a vast amount of talent/assets in and around the pitch, they have made 15 million alone in Wilfred Zaha, but when they hit administration they had to offload Victor Mosses to Wigan (it almost looked like he was going to join us at one point. ) He is currently at Chelsea and has roughly had 11 million plus spent on transfers in the last 3 years. Not only has Dougie got an eye for youth in his own club, but he knows a good bargain having purchased Glen Murray on a freebie from Brighton at the beginning of this season.

So his first major coaching position was with Palace, a club in administration, almost being relegated twice, they now have a squad brimming full of youth talent. He joined Bolton when Palace were sitting comfortably in 3rd, He clearly left them in a better position then when he joined them.

Not too shabby if you ask me.

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