Bolton Match Zone

Maddison Sent Off On Debut As Bolton Denied Home Win

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I don’t know whether this was meant to be some sort of new era, or our season starts here scenario, but in any case it wouldn’t have proved to be that anyway.

Bolton, who finished with ten men after a debut to forget for Marcus Maddison, could only draw 1-1 with Morecambe, That’s not to say there weren’t good things about what we did. Our approach play for most of the first half was pretty good, although it did feel a sterile at times. We kept the ball well but there was no end product. That changed when the wide men, Lloyd Isgrove and Arthur Gnahoua, swapped over mid way through the first half, Isgrove set up Eoin Doyle for a couple of chances which unfortunately weren’t taken. A few minutes before the break though, Doyle did take a chance, a good move, Nathan Delfouneso slipped the ball to the option on his left, which Doyle was able to stroke into the corner.

The problem seemed to be we approached things the wrong way around. It felt all very controlled for most of the time at 0-0, and when that would have worked nicely at 1-0, we seemed to have less in the second half, There was a let off as well when Sam Lavelle hit the bar for Morecambe from a free kick.

While MJ Williams started, the other two deadline day outfield signings had to come off the bench. Both Dapo Afolayan and Marcus Maddison looked lively, but 12 minutes after coming on, the latter’s night would come to an abrupt end. Maddison was shown a straight red for a tackle on Aaron Wildig, and whether it was a red card or not, an incredibly poor, lazy touch meant he had to go and win the ball back, and it was a sub-par challenge, although the surrounding and whinging from the Morecambe players probably did it for referee Oliver Langford.

From there, Morecambe made the man advantage count in terms of chances, but none were on target until the 83rd minute, when after the Shrimps made a quadruple sub, one of those, Brad Lyons managed to score from the corner with his first touch. It would be their only shot on target all night, and it was annoying to concede the goal in that way.

Wanderers looked like doing anything offensively in the last few minutes, bar one late chance, keeper Kyle Letheren’s clearance only got as far as Zach Elbouzedi, who may have been tempted to go for glory, instead he held on, and picked out Doyle who could only curl wide.

The way things were going, you’d probably take the point now, but up until the red card it was a game we were on top in, so from that angle was a frustrating night.

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