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Dapo Afolayan hopes his fancy footwork will be given a national audience on Monday night.
The Wanderers winger has pledged to pull-out a special goal celebration for the TV cameras if he gets on the scoresheet against Burton Albion.
And furthermore, he has thrown the gauntlet to in-form ex-West Ham team-mate Michail Antonio to try and beat his celebration when he next scores in the Premier League.
Afolayan gave a nod to Wanderers legend Jay-Jay Okocha after netting against AFC Wimbledon last month but plans to raise the bar even further if he gets a goal against the Brewers on Sky Sports.
“I’m loving it at the moment,” he told the Bolton News. “What happened with the Wimbledon goal, I was in the hotel and Paul Holliday (Bolton’s former media man) posted a video of Jay Jay clips because it was his birthday. I said if I scored I’d do the dance.
“But I have got loads of them. I think I am going to start a little competition between me and Michail Antonio and I am going to up it on Monday in front of the cameras.
“Let’s see who has got the best moves.”
Antonio recently plucked a cardboard cut-out of himself from behind the advertising hoardings to celebrate a goal against Leicester City, recreating a scene from the movie, Save the Last Dance.
Afolayan is playing with a smile on his face after scoring three goals in his first six games for Bolton, having turned his loan move from West Ham into a permanent deal in the summer.
“It is great, I’m enjoying being here, enjoying playing in front of the fans, it is something I missed last season and I thrive off it,” he said.
“You can see I am getting better with each game, more and more comfortable, and more of a threat in front of goal.”
The winger had to wait a while for his first goal, which came on the final day of last season to help clinch automatic promotion against Crawley.
Since then the 24-year-old has worked hard on his finishing and is now feeling confident that more goals will follow.
“I have said it before, last year was a funny one where I could easily have had six or seven goals. I had that many off the post, or near misses,” he said.
“When it wasn’t going for me I didn’t really want to change much. I knew I was getting in the right areas, it was just the finer details. So I spent time on it on the training pitch after sessions and stuff, and it is paying off now so hopefully there is a lot more to come.”
Afolayan first linked up with Wanderers in January and reckons the improved tactical familiarity in the squad is also helping his goal return.
“We all know each other now and the club have made one or two good additions to that team to help us – and you have seen how well the likes of George and Josh have done so far. It makes it easier for all of us to play.
“We know what we are trying to do, trying to achieve, it makes it so much easier.”
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