Will We Finish Higher Than Last Season?

Not a fucking chance with this fuckwit in charge   

bwfc1874 wrote: a horrendous start fucked us last season and namely a dreadful back 4. I think Moxey Ream Wheater McNaughton is a strong back 4 in this division, good experience and quality there.

I also think we've added pace to our attack with Feeney and Hall looking like he's ready to break through (granted that's off the back of a good pre season so could be bollocks).

I'm also pretty sure Dougie will pull a striker out before the end of the transfer window, so provided that happens, I think we'll be in good shape.

So a better performance than last year, but not promotion.

 

Natasha Whittam wrote:

There are countless options, and none of them could do any worse than Douglas.

I can't wait to see who takes over. It makes the purchase of my season ticket seem so worthwhile.

Top Six. We will be promoted at the end of the season and look back at this thread and laugh.

Keegan wrote:Top Six. We will be promoted at the end of the season and look back at this thread and laugh.

I hope your right Keegan, that really would make my day!

If nothing else, I reckon my under shorts will finish higher up on my waistband than last season.

On paper the revamped squad looks capable of putting in a challenge. 
On grass we may struggle.

Have to say Dougie has brought in some experienced players to mix with the youngsters this year so the ingredients are there. I reckon higher but no idea how far we could go this time.

I'm not being unduly negative now, I'm being pragmatic, so don't all attack me and happy clap me to death.

The new season starts in just over three weeks.

We have two recognised experienced strikers at the club - One who fell out of favour with the manager and found himself loaned out for most of last term and another who played the "lone striker" role last year and chipped in with a frankly poor 7 goals from 33 starts.

Freedman clearly doesn't rate Davies and (in my opinion at least) Beckford is second rate. I've seen people saying he "might come good this term" but there's absolutely no evidence to support this - he's 30 and has never been a top striker at any level.

Last season would have ended on a much sourer note without the goals scored by Jutkiewicz and (to a lesser extent) Mason - neither of whom now play for us.

We've picked up a smattering of defenders and midfielders, none of whom have previously set the footballing world alight during their careers - the majority appear to be "solid" types rather than spectacular.

We are obviously now even more skint than even the most pessimistic of us could have imagined, given the news regarding the parachute payments being handed over to the bank, so there won't be any "exciting" signings between now and the start of the season.

Turning now to Freedman the master tactician.......

Unless Doug's bumped his head and woken up thinking he's someone else, I think we're not going to see any dramatic improvement in that department.

Last season on Chatbox, nearly every week we had more comments along the likes of "Get (insert name here) off, Freedman!" and "Oh shit! What the fuck's he doing taking (insert name here) and bringing (insert name here) on?" than anything else.

And then we invariably conceded a goal or lost the game.

And please spare me the "Square pegs in Dougie's round holes" argument - if you haven't got players technically proficient enough to play a certain way, you don't try and play that way, you play a system that you believe your players can handle. It's not difficult....

In summary, am I confident about this season?

No, not massively.

Can we do well?

Yes, possibly, but it will take a perfect storm of the new players gelling almost immediately, Dougie stopping making tactically naive decisions in games, Beckford or someone else suddenly becoming a world beater and scoring a shit-load of goals and a massive slice of luck.

We all want Bolton to do well, but it just looks to me that plenty of people are confusing "blind faith & hope" with evidence based assumptions on the actual facts of the situation.

Right, let the stoning begin.....

Burnley are a prime example of what can be achieved on a limited budget. Who would have dreamt that they would have qualified for automatic promotion last season? They probably were not on anyone's radar having sold Rodriguez and Austin.

Freedman is fecking clueless, deep down even the happy clappers know it.

There are plenty of skint clubs in the Championship who have to pick up their signings for next to nothing - it's called managers doing their job.

I think we will be ok if Freedman deploys Ream in midfield, but he won't and we'll be totally toothless going forward once again. A better defence than last season will probably keep us out of a relegation battle.

Breaders has it 100% right for me

Very similar, you and me.

I spent twenty minutes looking at the fixtures and working out how many points I think we'll get for the "What's the point?" thread and finally came up with a figure I was happy with - 60.

Only to discover that you'd already claimed it, so I had to go for 59 instead..... 

great minds think alike Breaders!   must be the Halliwell upbringing

Reebok Trotter wrote:Burnley are a prime example of what can be achieved on a limited budget. Who would have dreamt that they would have qualified for automatic promotion last season? They probably were not on anyone's radar having sold Rodriguez and Austin.

Do you think Burnley would have gone up with Freedman at the helm? I don't.

Breadman wrote:I'm not being unduly negative now, I'm being pragmatic, so don't all attack me and happy clap me to death.

The new season starts in just over three weeks.

We have two recognised experienced strikers at the club - One who fell out of favour with the manager and found himself loaned out for most of last term and another who played the "lone striker" role last year and chipped in with a frankly poor 7 goals from 33 starts.

Freedman clearly doesn't rate Davies and (in my opinion at least) Beckford is second rate. I've seen people saying he "might come good this term" but there's absolutely no evidence to support this - he's 30 and has never been a top striker at any level.

Last season would have ended on a much sourer note without the goals scored by Jutkiewicz and (to a lesser extent) Mason - neither of whom now play for us.

We've picked up a smattering of defenders and midfielders, none of whom have previously set the footballing world alight during their careers - the majority appear to be "solid" types rather than spectacular.

We are obviously now even more skint than even the most pessimistic of us could have imagined, given the news regarding the parachute payments being handed over to the bank, so there won't be any "exciting" signings between now and the start of the season.

Turning now to Freedman the master tactician.......

Unless Doug's bumped his head and woken up thinking he's someone else, I think we're not going to see any dramatic improvement in that department.

Last season on Chatbox, nearly every week we had more comments along the likes of "Get (insert name here) off, Freedman!" and "Oh shit! What the fuck's he doing taking (insert name here) and bringing (insert name here) on?" than anything else.

And then we invariably conceded a goal or lost the game.

And please spare me the "Square pegs in Dougie's round holes" argument - if you haven't got players technically proficient enough to play a certain way, you don't try and play that way, you play a system that you believe your players can handle. It's not difficult....

In summary, am I confident about this season?

No, not massively.

Can we do well?

Yes, possibly, but it will take a perfect storm of the new players gelling almost immediately, Dougie stopping making tactically naive decisions in games, Beckford or someone else suddenly becoming a world beater and scoring a shit-load of goals and a massive slice of luck.

We all want Bolton to do well, but it just looks to me that plenty of people are confusing "blind faith & hope" with evidence based assumptions on the actual facts of the situation.

Right, let the stoning begin.....

You talk about basing your assumptions on evidence, but the evidence shows that this group of players got a better points tally in the second half of the season, than the previous bunch did so Im not sure where you're coming from there. That's what Im basing my top 10 prediction on.
 
We will make at least 2 new signings before the window shuts Im very confident of that, why are you convinced we won't? Missing out on a player that went for £2 million hardly means we can't sign anybody else.

I'd also say judging tactics by the chatbox is a little misleading.

What do you mean "this group of players"....?

Half of them were playing for somebody else last season.

I hope you're right and we do sign a couple more, but I stand by my point that they won't be world-beaters  because we have no money to buy the best that's available and if we do sign a striker (on loan probably) he won't be a twenty goals a season man because  they cost the type of money that we simply haven't got.

Look at Jutkewicz, did ok for us, proved he can fit in Freedman's preferred system, wanted to sign a permanent deal but we had to pass because we couldn't compete financially with the other interested parties.

£2m is not a lot of money for a player of his standard nowadays, but it's the type of money we can only dream of spending on a striker.

We'll end up with another gamble, who won't be fit and may or may not score a few next season.

We got lucky with Jutkewiecz but still couldn't afford to keep him.

The best we can hope for is that we get lucky again.

Two key words there "hope" and "lucky" and that's why I stand by the points I made earlier.

boltonbonce wrote:

Reebok Trotter wrote:Burnley are a prime example of what can be achieved on a limited budget. Who would have dreamt that they would have qualified for automatic promotion last season? They probably were not on anyone's radar having sold Rodriguez and Austin.

Do you think Burnley would have gone up with Freedman at the helm? I don't.

It's quite possible. Let's not forget that Palace were top of the Championship when Dougie left them for us. Most of these arguments are hypothetical anyway.

Chelsea have an astronomical wage bill as well as one of the highest paid managers in the world and yet they still won bugger all.

In my opinion, Palace's position had more to with Zaha, whose natural ability and goals masked quite a lot of Freedman's inadequacies as a manager.

I'm basing my opinions on how we'll fare this term on what I've seen and read of Freedman during his time in charge of Bolton Wanderers, not Palace.

Palace was a long time ago.

We've had a season and a half of Freedman's tactics and selections and, purely in terms of what's happening on the pitch, I don't think we've moved on significantly.

It's not all down to him, obviously. The players need to shape up and start producing but nothing I've seen suggests that we're in any sort of position to mount a serious campaign to get promoted.

It's all "fingers crossed" and "hopefully", but without any serious indicators that we'll do well.

Think it's mad to put Palace's success all down to Zaha, Murray got nearly 30 goals, Bolasie's still one of their better players and has made it in the prem, Jedinak was their player of the season last year. All Freedman signings, and remember under Holloway they fell away and nearly missed out on the play offs.

I get people not liking him but there's often an attempt to distort things so everything he's ever done looks bad.

I can't even remember what position we finished up last season, I know it was somewhere mediocre-ish. Same again for next unless someone magics up a competent goalscorer.