It was another rotten night for Bolton as they could only scrape a 1-1 draw at home to managerless and winless Mansfield.
George Lapslie headed in a corner 12 minutes into the second half, and it looked like we’d do the most Bolton thing imaginable and lose to the winless side, until Antoni Sarcevic at least ensured we came away with a point after Ali Crawford played him through and he put the ball over Marek Stech and into the back of the net from about 12 yards out.
Nobody got going, and while we looked alright early on, Mansfield eventually took the initiative and it was hardly a surprise when they did go ahead. When Sarcevic managed to try and almost pull us out of the mire himself in the last 15 minutes, that was the only real time it looked as if we’d equalise.
It’s hard to work out exactly where things are going wrong, except for everywhere. Injuries aren’t helping, and there was another one for Harry Brockbank tonight, but we’re in the lower reaches of the table for both goals scored and goals conceded, none of our natural left backs appear to be good enough, and our central defensive midfielders just aren’t performing either. Even poor Peter Kioso has dropped off in the last couple of games, probably having any sort of performance drained out of him by whatever is cursing this club.
Are we just lacking experience, with only a couple of older players on the pitch, led by a manager in his first EFL season, and overseen by a head of football operations who nobody knows a massive deal about?
Anyway, there’s a change of pace at least this weekend, allowing us to disappoint in the FA Cup rather than our usual act of disappointing in the league.