Injuries Threaten To Derail Bolton’s Progress

Bolton Wanderers are going through a crippling injury crisis that would have even the country’s biggest teams, with the largest squads to choose from, concerned. The likes of Jose Mourinho and Louis van Gaal, who have potentially the deepest squads in the country, have publicly whinged about the amount of games they have to play this season, but they’d do well to look at the rigours of the Championship – where teams have far smaller squads and budgets to play with.

The Bolton squad has certainly struggled to keep up particularly in the attacking areas, with more players warming the treatment bench than available for selection. Neil Lennon is currently struggling to fill the attacking roles with Mark Davies and Max Clayton missing long-term, as well as lesser injuries to Craig Davies, Emile Heskey, Chung-Yong Lee and Zach Clough – who has been cruelly denied first-team action since his FA Cup heroics against Wigan.

These injuries are threatening to undo the superb turnaround Wanderers have enjoyed since the arrival of Lennon – as was shown only too bluntly by the humiliating 4-2 defeat at Rotherham. That scoreline was hugely flattering on Wanderers, we were truly awful for 80 minutes and could well have been six or seven goals down.

Cravies in particular is clearly a huge miss for us. His strength, willingness to run himself into the ground for the team and being a pure pain in the backside for rival defenders are absolutely vital, and we need him back as soon as possible. The concern with him missing is that no-one else can do the same job.

Part of the problem at Rotherham – in addition to the fact that we defended like muppets – was an inability to keep the ball effectively because we had no presence up front. Conor Wilkinson is young and we can’t realistically expect too much of him, but he simply isn’t good enough to be starting Championship matches. He gets bullied by defenders at this level and his lack of strength means he is uncapable of holding the ball up, which simply piles pressure on the midfield and defence.

Heskey, try as he might, also doesn’t help us keep the ball. Against Liverpool, for example, he was more likely to try and flick the ball on when no-one was getting in behind him, rather than hold it up to bring midfield runners like Darren Pratley into the game.

Adam Le Fondre is a good addition to the squad and a proven goalscorer, but he also can’t be expected to fill the Cravies role. The big concern is that the growing injury worries will derail our progress and have us looking back down the table, rather than up it.

What’s for certain is that we cannot afford to have any more performances like Tuesday night – when, I dare to say it, we looked more like Bolton under Dougie than Bolton under Lennon.