One Game at a Time
Bolton Wanderers (H) August 27th
After the South London slaughter, it perhaps wasn’t too much of a shock that, despite the lack of a train almost anywhere in the country, the clarion call for Argyle in deepest Gloucestershire (fortunately not as deep as the rain that fell there on Tuesday) was All Change!
The one thing that every successful side need is someone who knows the way to goal. For Argyle so far that is the man with not one, but two A2Z’s to his name, the man who puts the Finn in finishing.
With normal service resumed at the back, albeit without what had become the normal back line, a tidy away performance put the gloss on a Glous trip which was all the better for not having a Matt finish.
A week to prepare therefore for the arrival of the latest representatives of the twenty-three grim northern football outposts we share a division with. This week’s hopefuls, Bolton Wanderers, are one of the original founders of the Football league, although having a long history doesn’t always mean a glorious one, with the dusty Unibol trophy cabinet not having needed a lock since 1958.
Originally a church team, Christ Church, they became Bolton Wanderers after a falling out with the vicar left them without a ground, and they led a nomadic existence before alighting on Burnden Park. After a couple of losing Cup Finals they won their first major trophy in the White Horse Cup Final at Wembley in 1923, dodging horse poo for fun in defeating West Ham 2-0. The clubs golden age began in 1935, when they began a run that lasted until 1964 of top-flight football. They remain the team with the longest run of top flight seasons never to have won the highest league honour.
The Trotters, as they are nicknamed have not always played in their traditional white. They were known as the Spots when their original white shirts also carried red polka dots. Indeed, there is uncertainty whether the Trotters nickname comes from their nomadic origins, the local term for a practical joker, or the practice of having to trot through the local pig farm to collect the ball at their first ground in Pikes Lane.
The idea it comes from being a practical joker may explain the statement from Ian Evatt last season when he announced, straight faced, that his team were the best in the division. The ex-Barrow manager, who had replaced Keith Hill, then had to live with being trolled by that loveable scamp James McClean. After Evatt had claimed McClean’s agent was begging him to sign for Wanderers before he joined eventual champions Wigan, the claim, fiercely denied by Maclean, resulted in McClean tweeting what a shame the matches would not be played this season, after Wigans promotion. In the tweet Evatt is captioned plaintively saying, “but, but we're the best team in the league.” Out by eight in the end, Ian.
It is impossible not to reflect on Bolton without mentioning Nat Lofthouse, the one club man who led Wanderers through their Golden Age. The “Lion of Vienna” who scored 30 goals in 33 appearances for England, is still the seventh on the list of top flight scorers with 255 goals…just ahead of Harry Kane.
He is perhaps best known for bundling Harry Gregg into the net for a goal that VAR would have kittens over today, in Boltons last major trophy win, the FA Cup against the Munich tragedy depleted Busby Babes. He also scored in every round of the cup run that culminated in the Matthews Cup Final in 1953. He fulfilled almost every managerial role at Bolton, before becoming their life club President. Thousands turned out for his funeral, and Virgin West Coast named a train after him. Presumably knowing their timetable efficiency they called it the Late Nat Lofthouse.
He was one of only a few Bolton players that served down the mines during the Second World war. 32 of the club’s professionals (Lofthouse arrived at Bolton as a pro on literally the day war broke out) served in the Armed forces, the majority in the 53rd Bolton Field Artillery. They fought at Dunkirk, and in North Africa and Italy, where club captain Harry Goslin was the only wartime fatality they suffered. So last ditch defence and lobbing high balls into the box runs in the clubs DNA.
There are not too many player links between the clubs, although Will Aimson is still there somewhere. The Manchester Messi, Sarcevic fell out with Evatt and departed to local non leaguers Stockport to drive them back into the League. Looking back, Dave Sutton headed eventually there after leaving HP. David Norris, more successfully came the other way.
There are more significant connections managerially. Pre-war, Bob Jack made his name at Bolton before joining Arsenal and then heading west to lead Argyle as their most successful ever manager. Keith Hills nomadic managerial career in the North West had the briefest of spells after the recent takeover. Gary Megson fell one short of a century in charge but had the honour of leading the Wanderers in one of their European campaigns.
John McGovern had over a hundred games in charge before arriving at Home Park with Peter Shilton later in his career. Peter Reid started his playing career at Burnden Park before heading to Everton.
Shilton himself managed a solitary late career playing appearance, aged about 85, for Bolton in his post Argyle tour of minor outposts. He appeared as a last minute replacement in the 1995 play-off match with Wolves, and, clutching his pension book, helped hold Wolves to a narrow 2-1 first leg lead. The second leg is best remembered by both sets of fans for the controversial non sending off of Bolton legend John McGinlay, a striker who unlike Nat Lofthouse was more “Lyons and Viennetta”, but who managed to escape with a booking for a punch on Wolves striker David Kelly that grounded the player despite being clearly seen by the ref. McGinlay then scored the decisive goal that took Wanderers to Wembley and played in the subsequent victory over Reading. Shilton was also there, on the bench, although he kept waking up and asking where he was and what was all the noise.
A couple of years later the visit of Wolves triggered a 22 man brawl known as the Battle of Burnden, seemingly over the award of a goal kick. Long memories those Wolves. The Wanderers rivalry, which began when Billy Wright and Lofthouse faced off in the fifties remains to this day. McGinlay himself recalls his cousin, years after the play-off game, interviewing a Wolves fan for a job who walked out on learning his interviewer was related to John.
There is no truth that the rivalry has extended to the arrival of Wanderer upstarts Wycombe. Obviously, Bolton has a long history of being Wanderers first (apart from the first Wanderers of course), although by a strange quirk, if you add up all the extended time played by the Bucks media darlings, they will overtake Bolton in Wanderers longevity within four seasons.
If the time of McGinlay and Bruce Rioch was when Wanderers were christened as White Hot, in recent seasons the period of England’s most successful ever manager, Sam Allardyce (played one, won one, 100% record, deal with it) stewardship of the club was both bizarre but also remarkably successful.
Bringing data analysis into the equation as well as choosing to focus his spending less on transfer fees and spreading the resultant savings onto wages to encourage players to join, Allardyce managed to recruit an incredible roll call of unlikely international players to Bolton, including Ivan Campo, Jay Jay Okocha, World Cup winner Youri Djorkaeff and even the Incredible Sulk himself, Nicholas Anelka.
Allardyce also introduced other innovations, including the focussing on creating the Position of Maximum Opportunity to set up for corners and free kicks, and using statistics to show players that inswinging corners were far more likely to lead to goals than outswingers. Allardyce joked that if he pronounced his name as if Italian he would be hailed as a footballing genius. On the other hand, he did give a coaching job to Sammy Lee.
If statistics were the bedrock of Allardyce’s reign, one of the most curious stats is that of all the many hard men and miscreants that have ever worn the white and black of Bolton, none are statistically dirtier than Jussi Jaaskelainen, the Finnish goalkeeper. And not just because pitches were muddier then. In a Premier League career which lasted over four hundred matches the Finn committed just seven fouls, and yet received 24 yellow cards and four red ones.
Not all Allardyce’s foreign buys were successes. Gregorz Rasiak, the beanpole Polish striker, was disappointed find that his signing, with a promise that he would be involved training the runners at Bolton, had him standing in Allardyce’s garden from the end of May draped in bean shoots.
So having strengthened in the close season, Ian Evatt brings the new improved, even better than the best team in the division, (off by six currently), down to Home Park, smarting from a territorially dominant, but scoringly incompetent home defeat by the Wendies.
Evatt’s attention to detail will ensure a full supply of arm bands and water wings have been packed after last season’s Ryan Broom front crawl celebrations in front of the Deep End, sorry Devonport End.
Argyle will simply be grateful that Wanderers, despite having nurtured one of the greatest forwards ever to grace the English game, when the chance came, took one look at the young Bolton born Wanderers fan on trial and discarded him as too scrawny.
Paul Mariner. One Wanderer who will always be loved by Home Park.
.
Bolton Wanderers (H) August 27th
After the South London slaughter, it perhaps wasn’t too much of a shock that, despite the lack of a train almost anywhere in the country, the clarion call for Argyle in deepest Gloucestershire (fortunately not as deep as the rain that fell there on Tuesday) was All Change!
The one thing that every successful side need is someone who knows the way to goal. For Argyle so far that is the man with not one, but two A2Z’s to his name, the man who puts the Finn in finishing.
With normal service resumed at the back, albeit without what had become the normal back line, a tidy away performance put the gloss on a Glous trip which was all the better for not having a Matt finish.
A week to prepare therefore for the arrival of the latest representatives of the twenty-three grim northern football outposts we share a division with. This week’s hopefuls, Bolton Wanderers, are one of the original founders of the Football league, although having a long history doesn’t always mean a glorious one, with the dusty Unibol trophy cabinet not having needed a lock since 1958.
Originally a church team, Christ Church, they became Bolton Wanderers after a falling out with the vicar left them without a ground, and they led a nomadic existence before alighting on Burnden Park. After a couple of losing Cup Finals they won their first major trophy in the White Horse Cup Final at Wembley in 1923, dodging horse poo for fun in defeating West Ham 2-0. The clubs golden age began in 1935, when they began a run that lasted until 1964 of top-flight football. They remain the team with the longest run of top flight seasons never to have won the highest league honour.
The Trotters, as they are nicknamed have not always played in their traditional white. They were known as the Spots when their original white shirts also carried red polka dots. Indeed, there is uncertainty whether the Trotters nickname comes from their nomadic origins, the local term for a practical joker, or the practice of having to trot through the local pig farm to collect the ball at their first ground in Pikes Lane.
The idea it comes from being a practical joker may explain the statement from Ian Evatt last season when he announced, straight faced, that his team were the best in the division. The ex-Barrow manager, who had replaced Keith Hill, then had to live with being trolled by that loveable scamp James McClean. After Evatt had claimed McClean’s agent was begging him to sign for Wanderers before he joined eventual champions Wigan, the claim, fiercely denied by Maclean, resulted in McClean tweeting what a shame the matches would not be played this season, after Wigans promotion. In the tweet Evatt is captioned plaintively saying, “but, but we're the best team in the league.” Out by eight in the end, Ian.
It is impossible not to reflect on Bolton without mentioning Nat Lofthouse, the one club man who led Wanderers through their Golden Age. The “Lion of Vienna” who scored 30 goals in 33 appearances for England, is still the seventh on the list of top flight scorers with 255 goals…just ahead of Harry Kane.
He is perhaps best known for bundling Harry Gregg into the net for a goal that VAR would have kittens over today, in Boltons last major trophy win, the FA Cup against the Munich tragedy depleted Busby Babes. He also scored in every round of the cup run that culminated in the Matthews Cup Final in 1953. He fulfilled almost every managerial role at Bolton, before becoming their life club President. Thousands turned out for his funeral, and Virgin West Coast named a train after him. Presumably knowing their timetable efficiency they called it the Late Nat Lofthouse.
He was one of only a few Bolton players that served down the mines during the Second World war. 32 of the club’s professionals (Lofthouse arrived at Bolton as a pro on literally the day war broke out) served in the Armed forces, the majority in the 53rd Bolton Field Artillery. They fought at Dunkirk, and in North Africa and Italy, where club captain Harry Goslin was the only wartime fatality they suffered. So last ditch defence and lobbing high balls into the box runs in the clubs DNA.
There are not too many player links between the clubs, although Will Aimson is still there somewhere. The Manchester Messi, Sarcevic fell out with Evatt and departed to local non leaguers Stockport to drive them back into the League. Looking back, Dave Sutton headed eventually there after leaving HP. David Norris, more successfully came the other way.
There are more significant connections managerially. Pre-war, Bob Jack made his name at Bolton before joining Arsenal and then heading west to lead Argyle as their most successful ever manager. Keith Hills nomadic managerial career in the North West had the briefest of spells after the recent takeover. Gary Megson fell one short of a century in charge but had the honour of leading the Wanderers in one of their European campaigns.
John McGovern had over a hundred games in charge before arriving at Home Park with Peter Shilton later in his career. Peter Reid started his playing career at Burnden Park before heading to Everton.
Shilton himself managed a solitary late career playing appearance, aged about 85, for Bolton in his post Argyle tour of minor outposts. He appeared as a last minute replacement in the 1995 play-off match with Wolves, and, clutching his pension book, helped hold Wolves to a narrow 2-1 first leg lead. The second leg is best remembered by both sets of fans for the controversial non sending off of Bolton legend John McGinlay, a striker who unlike Nat Lofthouse was more “Lyons and Viennetta”, but who managed to escape with a booking for a punch on Wolves striker David Kelly that grounded the player despite being clearly seen by the ref. McGinlay then scored the decisive goal that took Wanderers to Wembley and played in the subsequent victory over Reading. Shilton was also there, on the bench, although he kept waking up and asking where he was and what was all the noise.
A couple of years later the visit of Wolves triggered a 22 man brawl known as the Battle of Burnden, seemingly over the award of a goal kick. Long memories those Wolves. The Wanderers rivalry, which began when Billy Wright and Lofthouse faced off in the fifties remains to this day. McGinlay himself recalls his cousin, years after the play-off game, interviewing a Wolves fan for a job who walked out on learning his interviewer was related to John.
There is no truth that the rivalry has extended to the arrival of Wanderer upstarts Wycombe. Obviously, Bolton has a long history of being Wanderers first (apart from the first Wanderers of course), although by a strange quirk, if you add up all the extended time played by the Bucks media darlings, they will overtake Bolton in Wanderers longevity within four seasons.
If the time of McGinlay and Bruce Rioch was when Wanderers were christened as White Hot, in recent seasons the period of England’s most successful ever manager, Sam Allardyce (played one, won one, 100% record, deal with it) stewardship of the club was both bizarre but also remarkably successful.
Bringing data analysis into the equation as well as choosing to focus his spending less on transfer fees and spreading the resultant savings onto wages to encourage players to join, Allardyce managed to recruit an incredible roll call of unlikely international players to Bolton, including Ivan Campo, Jay Jay Okocha, World Cup winner Youri Djorkaeff and even the Incredible Sulk himself, Nicholas Anelka.
Allardyce also introduced other innovations, including the focussing on creating the Position of Maximum Opportunity to set up for corners and free kicks, and using statistics to show players that inswinging corners were far more likely to lead to goals than outswingers. Allardyce joked that if he pronounced his name as if Italian he would be hailed as a footballing genius. On the other hand, he did give a coaching job to Sammy Lee.
If statistics were the bedrock of Allardyce’s reign, one of the most curious stats is that of all the many hard men and miscreants that have ever worn the white and black of Bolton, none are statistically dirtier than Jussi Jaaskelainen, the Finnish goalkeeper. And not just because pitches were muddier then. In a Premier League career which lasted over four hundred matches the Finn committed just seven fouls, and yet received 24 yellow cards and four red ones.
Not all Allardyce’s foreign buys were successes. Gregorz Rasiak, the beanpole Polish striker, was disappointed find that his signing, with a promise that he would be involved training the runners at Bolton, had him standing in Allardyce’s garden from the end of May draped in bean shoots.
So having strengthened in the close season, Ian Evatt brings the new improved, even better than the best team in the division, (off by six currently), down to Home Park, smarting from a territorially dominant, but scoringly incompetent home defeat by the Wendies.
Evatt’s attention to detail will ensure a full supply of arm bands and water wings have been packed after last season’s Ryan Broom front crawl celebrations in front of the Deep End, sorry Devonport End.
Argyle will simply be grateful that Wanderers, despite having nurtured one of the greatest forwards ever to grace the English game, when the chance came, took one look at the young Bolton born Wanderers fan on trial and discarded him as too scrawny.
Paul Mariner. One Wanderer who will always be loved by Home Park.
.
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