Home
Klaidi Lolos is banking on continuing the hottest scoring streak of his career at Bolton Wanderers.
The versatile striker scored in eight of Crawley’s last 15 games to help them gain promotion against the odds from League Two last season.
Clubs in the Championship and League One had eyes on the 23-year-old as he continued his career revival, fighting back from the disappointment of being released at Plymouth Argyle as a teenager and reinventing himself in National League North with Oxford City.
But Lolos knows the pressure will be greater than ever before when he pulls on a Wanderers shirt this season, looking to supply goals once again.
“The plan is to keep scoring,” he told The Bolton News. “Those goals are why Bolton have brought me here, so the plan is to make sure that keeps happening. I want as many as possible.
“I know this is a massive challenge. Right away as soon as I came down here to meet the gaffer, I looked around the stadium and thought: “Wow, this is mental!”
“It is a huge club, and I can’t wait to see the stadium full and celebrating one of my goals.”
Lolos had scored 16 goals for Oxford City in all competitions before joining Crawley but admits his first few months back in the Football League were not all sweetness and light.
“There were moments last season where I got a bit frustrated, I was getting in the right areas most games, doing the right things, but the last bit just wasn’t going in. I just wasn’t scoring,” he said.
“Out of nowhere it just clicked. I felt it on the pitch, I was getting chances and not thinking about anything else, hitting the target, and thankfully they were going in.”
Goals brought attention, and Lolos found himself having to cope with another type of pressure, more akin to the one he will be facing at Wanderers.
“I tried not to look at the outside noise and focus on what I was doing on the pitch,” he said.
“When your mind starts going to different places, thinking about a move, you tend not to give it your all on a Saturday or a Tuesday. I just tried to shake it off and keep going, just get on with it.”
Lolos had a brief taste of league football with Plymouth as a youngster and was part of the Pilgrims squad promoted to League One in 2019/20.
He is the first to concede now, however, that his application at Home Park was not enough to keep him in professional football.
“I was young in age, young in my mentality too,” he said.
“I would be told things by staff, and it should be about being a sponge and taking in as much as possible at that age, but I wasn’t one of those, I let it go in one ear and out the other. I was right, they were wrong. But it didn’t work out and I had to change my attitude towards everything.
“Ever since it came to an end at Plymouth, that is where the penny started dropping.
“I had work on myself as a person because that was what was keeping me back.
“I trained 100 per cent every day at Oxford, then away from training did my own stuff. I tried to keep professional regardless of the level I was playing.
“Essentially, I had to believe in myself. That was the most important thing.
“Thankfully from then on, it has gone well. Now I need to build on it.”
Crawley were written off as relegation fodder last season but under Scott Lindsey managed to play their way out of the division and finish a respectable seventh. They beat MK Dons 8-1 on aggregate in the play-off semi-final and then comfortably beat Crewe 2-0 at Wembley. The team that played in the final contained nine players who had been playing non-league a year earlier.
“We looked at it as a positive,” Lolos said of the relegation predictions. “Just before the start of the season, we were the ultimate underdogs, nobody was going to take us seriously.
“But game after game we showed we had a tight group, a manager who implemented his style of play, and it all fell into place for everyone.”
Success for Crawley has inevitably led to the break-up of the team – Lolos joined Bolton, goalkeeper Correy Addai has gone to Stockport, Will Wright to Swindon, play-off final scorers Danillo Orsi and Liam Kelly to Burton and MK Dons, respectively.
Lindsey has been left to scour the market for replacements, and his side is once again tipped heavily for relegation.
Lolos hopes they can find another solution to beat the bookies.
“It is a shame it broke up but it is what can happen in football,” he said. “If things go well, people move on, if things go bad, people move on.
“They will still have a chance this season. I am sure people will write them off because of the size of the club and whatever else, but I hope they survive and I wish them the best.”
One player who has stayed put at Crawley, for now, is former Wanderers midfielder Ronan Darcy.
The Liverpudlian was part of the Bolton academy from the age of nine, going on to make 32 senior appearances and scoring twice.
And Lolos revealed that Darcy’s recommendation played some part in his decision to come to Lancashire this summer.
“I spoke to him during the season about Bolton and he had nothing but good words to say about the club, the size, the ambition of the place, everything.
“He didn’t make my mind up – but he 100 per cent gave me an insight into how it might be.”
Source