Home
It was a relief to get to matchday after all the political shenanigans around confining us to barracks this week and to realise that I could still manage an isolated pre-match drink in the No-Name.
Surely social distancing is the biggest oxymoron of the year?
We were looking forward to playing our local rivals, Oldham Athletic, a club like us who have been going through financial and ownership problems and had not started well this season.
Unfortunately, it was going to be a local derby match without the unique local derby atmosphere because of the lack of a crowd.
To counter this, Bolton tried to introduce crowd noise over the tannoy system, which judging by the annoying dirge that came through on the iFollow, failed miserably to create any atmosphere. Maybe it sounded better in the ground? I do not know.
Ian Evatt made three changes, giving new arrival Peter Kioso his debut. This turned out to be one of the few successes on the day, as he constantly made himself available and provided the cross for Nathan Delfouneso to score.
The game turned out to be an end-to-end, open game, in fact too open in my opinion. We dominated the possession but not the play.
It never felt like we were in control. We seem to be concentrating on keeping possession, making that extra pass, when we should be looking for that telling cross or defence splitting pass.
Oldham always looked dangerous with far less possession. It was no surprise when they bagged the winner late on.
We are having to cope with a massive amount of change at the club.
We have nailed our colours to the mast in terms of a completley fresh start with all new management and players and we will have to run with it.
The challenge is for Evatt and his management team to find a winning formula and find it sooner rather than later.
I have bad memories of Little Sam’s period in charge, when he tried to introduce too much change in playing style and he did not have the massive changes in playing staff that Evatt must cope with.
The last dice has been thrown in this transfer window, so we need to keep the faith and back the manager to get it right.
The only lockdown I want to see is in our defence.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Surely social distancing is the biggest oxymoron of the year?
We were looking forward to playing our local rivals, Oldham Athletic, a club like us who have been going through financial and ownership problems and had not started well this season.
Unfortunately, it was going to be a local derby match without the unique local derby atmosphere because of the lack of a crowd.
To counter this, Bolton tried to introduce crowd noise over the tannoy system, which judging by the annoying dirge that came through on the iFollow, failed miserably to create any atmosphere. Maybe it sounded better in the ground? I do not know.
Ian Evatt made three changes, giving new arrival Peter Kioso his debut. This turned out to be one of the few successes on the day, as he constantly made himself available and provided the cross for Nathan Delfouneso to score.
The game turned out to be an end-to-end, open game, in fact too open in my opinion. We dominated the possession but not the play.
It never felt like we were in control. We seem to be concentrating on keeping possession, making that extra pass, when we should be looking for that telling cross or defence splitting pass.
Oldham always looked dangerous with far less possession. It was no surprise when they bagged the winner late on.
We are having to cope with a massive amount of change at the club.
We have nailed our colours to the mast in terms of a completley fresh start with all new management and players and we will have to run with it.
The challenge is for Evatt and his management team to find a winning formula and find it sooner rather than later.
I have bad memories of Little Sam’s period in charge, when he tried to introduce too much change in playing style and he did not have the massive changes in playing staff that Evatt must cope with.
The last dice has been thrown in this transfer window, so we need to keep the faith and back the manager to get it right.
The only lockdown I want to see is in our defence.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]