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BWFC Guest Article: The Real Essence Of Bolton

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A lovely little guest article which puts everything into perspective


As you know, I’ve been a bit lost lately in regards to my football team. I thought only a win would lift my spirits… I was wrong. Adlington2 has just sent me a lovely little piece putting everything into perspective. Bolton Wanderers are fodder for the big boys and always will be. But there are 53 teams in a worse position than we are at the moment, so can’t complain… Anyway, enjoy the guest article…



What are all you newcomers on about? Barely remember pre-Allardyce, what? I remember the days of Nat very well and I can tell you – it’s always been like this.


Nat carried us on his back nearly all his career but even he couldn’t do it all. We struggled, there were some good players in the side like Willie Moir, Tommy Banks, Bobby Langton. but more often than not, we struggled.


Just like today there were others who got moaned about all the time, Bryan Edwards, Derek Hennin, for example, but they still got picked every week. So there’s nothing new about a player like Zat Knight driving people mad. He’s good in the air, at 10 feet tall he should be. We might improve, we might not in which case the manager will get sacked and we’ll start again. So what? It’s happened before.


My point is that the essence of Bolton is – struggle. As a fan you have to accept that, not start thinking it’s the end of the world because Knight is playing like an idiot, or we have expensive strikers who can’t score.


Occasionally we come good and we won the cup. I was there and I was absolutely delighted when Nat knocked Daft Harry Gregg – as we used to call him – in the back of the net. Nat was a joy and a genius. For at least 80% of his career he played for a team that was struggling – with a smile on his face.


For me the other big character has been Allardyce – the manager. The teams he put together, using world cup players like Jay Jay and Djorkaeff were something else. But here’s that word again – we struggled very often. Relegation battles were normal and even when Sam put together a team good enough for Europe – it all fell apart and he was off.


We’ve even been down to the old Third Division. A pretty good manager called Jimmy Armfield got us out of it. If we do go up to the Premier again, guess what we’ll do? Struggle like never before. But it will be good. And if we don’t? So what. There will still be another game next Saturday.

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