Bolton Wanderers not ready to give up on US star Stuart Holden

Dougie Freedman is refusing to give up on Stuart Holden despite the midfielder suffering another setback on the injury front.

The US international will fly home to see a surgeon on Monday to see what work needs doing on his right knee after breaking down in his comeback game for the development squad on Monday night.

Many have speculated that the desperately unlucky 28-year-old would be unable to continue his playing career if it was found that another long bout of rehabilitation would be required.

But despite Holden seemingly facing another daunting battle to return to regular football, Freedman has pledged that Wanderers will give him every opportunity to keep playing before even considering offering him other roles at the football club.

“I’m so disappointed for the lad,” he told The Bolton News. “I went to see him the next night for a meal and a drink and he’s a very positive person.

"I was going with the attitude ‘have you got it in your mindset to go again Stuart?’

“But before I got the question out he was telling me ‘I’m going back there to see my surgeon and if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll be back training in pre-season, if it’s the best possible news then I’ll be back training before the end of the season.’

“And if he’s got that attitude then I am backing him 100 per cent.”

While much will depend on the outcome of his meeting with his surgeon in the US, Holden has been guaranteed a role at the Reebok by Freedman if his worst fears are confirmed.

“I want Stuart here for many, many years in many different capacities,” he said.

“He’s very unselfish, he’s all about the football club, rather than take, take, take.

“That’s what sort of person I am as well and I love to have that type around me.”

Source

You got this up before I had the chance mate, just seen it and was thinking I'd post it if you hadn't.   

It's encouraging that Dougie wants to stick by Stuart and encouraging they talked about WHEN not IF he would be back in training.        

Dougie wrote:

“And if he’s got that attitude then I am backing him 100 per cent.”

This is one of the reasons the club is in such a financial mess. Dougie should have told Holden that his contract wouldn't be renewed at the end of the season.

When will they learn that BWFC is bigger than any player - if they keep giving silly contracts to injury prone/shit players there won't be a BWFC in a few years.

Good to hear Dougie say these things IMO. 

Up to Stu obviously but if the worst was to happen he'd be a great person to have in an about the young lads/academy IMO.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:

Up to Stu obviously but if the worst was to happen he'd be a great person to have in an about the young lads/academy IMO.

Why?

I just think he's an infectious personality, absolutely no evidence what so ever and purely conjecture but i think he'd be a good motivator for young players. 

but there's just as much chance he wouldn't be frankly. Sentiment for sure. 

I feel for the lad

I think if there's any way he could be useful to the club we should give him a role whether it's as a player, a coach or even perhaps as a scout for the academy working stateside. 

Apparently football is THE number one sport in the USA for children up to the age of twelve and it's almost a tie between it and basketball for the thirteen to sixteen year old bracket. Not only that it's growing faster every year in every demographic and it gains in popularity every time the USA qualify for the World Cup or another big name joins the MLS. 

In a country with almost three hundred million people there's probably at least five million playing some sort of organised "soccer" between the ages of fourteen and twenty one. That's a big pool of potential talent that quite a few clubs are starting to pick up on and Stuart is quite a famous name in the USA so he could be a real boon in helping us to tap it. Let's face it folks, if we as a club are ever going to seriously challenge for the big time (ie Premiership football and perhaps European qualification) we're going to need to think outside of the usual sources like Spain Italy and so on and start looking in the places the "Big Clubs" tend to ignore. 

The USA is a huge potential pool for us to fish in and it would be silly not to use whatever and whomever we can to give us the best possible chance of catching the best before anyone else does.

I suspect the US will also be paying his wages...

luckyPeterpiper wrote:
The USA is a huge potential pool for us to fish in and it would be silly not to use whatever and whomever we can to give us the best possible chance of catching the best before anyone else does.

The big problem about this though Peter is that basically clubs like ours would have to snap them up at our before academy level.

Because the USA is outside the EU adult players would need to meet the criteria of being an international for the USA and playing in 70% (or something like that) of their international games in the last two years - so they will already be high profile to loads of other clubs already.

It's a big ask to uproot a kid, transport him thousands of miles away from his family, and hope he succeeds from our academy - which hasn't produced anybody worth mentioning for over a decade.

That's the reason you don't see too many Americans over here playing club football at our level.

Sluffy wrote:

luckyPeterpiper wrote:
The USA is a huge potential pool for us to fish in and it would be silly not to use whatever and whomever we can to give us the best possible chance of catching the best before anyone else does.

The big problem about this though Peter is that basically clubs like ours would have to snap them up at our before academy level.

Because the USA is outside the EU adult players would need to meet the criteria of being an international for the USA and playing in 70% (or something like that) of their international games in the last two years - so they will already be high profile to loads of other clubs already.

It's a big ask to uproot a kid, transport him thousands of miles away from his family, and hope he succeeds from our academy - which hasn't produced anybody worth mentioning for over a decade.

That's the reason you don't see too many Americans over here playing club football at our level.

I take your point sluffy BUT in honesty I believe that sooner or later clubs like ours are going to be priced out of the European market altogether and that Latin American kids are already largely beyond our reach, I mean it's not long ago that some kid from Argentina or Brazil was valued at a million quid at the age of fourteen by his club and Barca, Chelseas and Arsenal were just a few of the clubs willing to pay it!   

In all seriousness, if clubs like ours are ever going to have a chance to compete against the big boys again we're going to have to grow our own talent and most kids in the UK and Europe are snapped up by the big boys long before we can get near them. I suspect this means we'll have to go into the areas where they aren't paying so much attention such as the USA, Australia and the Far East. Also I do think our own Asian Community might be a decent place to be scouting heavily, people of Indian, Pakistani and other ethnic minority decent are now forming a full four percent of the UK population which means more than 2.8 million people with almost none of them anywhere in the football league. If only ten percent of that group are under 25 and only ten percent of that smaller group are playing organised football somewhere it's still 28,000 possible recruits for a club to look at. 

The US is a vast place and there are plenty of areas and inner cities that a poor American family would be glad to get out of to start a new life in Lancashire even if that does sound nuts to us. I agree that it would be a difficult proposition but I think it's one door we should seriously consider knocking on because as the gap between the big boys and everyone else gets wider and wider the harder it will be to find any unlocked doors for us at all.