Bolton Wanderers 2022 : Part One – World Cup Mayhem

Welcome back, I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year,
This will be a mid-season update The season has been crazy due to the Qatar winter world cup. This meant following the end of last season we only had a few weeks before the new season started.

July

A solid start to the season sees us in 3rd at the end of the month with 9 points from 12 after some great wins and through in the EFL cup.

August

Another 9 points picked up from a possible 18 but we are out of the cup.

September

7 points from a possible 15 keeps us just in the playoff spots.

October

An awful month sees us slide down the table after taking just 3 points from a possible 18.

(November no games)

December 

0 points from a possible 3 and out of the FA Cup in the first games back since the World Cup

January

9 points from a possible 24 but at least we ended our run of 15 games without a win!

Table

as you can see the 15 games without a win made us slide down to 17th, we’re 10 points clear of relegation zone so that gives us some breathing room. We’re also only 12 points off the playoffs. So depending on the results the next 16 games we could end up anywhere.

Staff Update

I forgot to mention this in the last post but over the summer, I decided to bring in a Director of Football and a Technical Director to help with the running of the club. Our DOF is now in full control of player wages and dealing with the transfer deals. I will find some players I’m interested in and add to a list for him in priority order to target. I gave him some targets leading into the winter transfer window of a new center back and striker was needed, I gave him a list of 3 players from which my scout team had found for each position and I’m glad to see he got the deals done. (You will see below) He got our number 2 target CB and our number 1 target ST.

Director of Football

Technical Director

Lee is now in charge of the staff, he deals with their wages and with any incoming improvements or replacements. He’s mainly improved our medical team so far but I’m happy with the deals hes done.

In

Just the one deal but we spent some money, Halme was my second choice on the list provided to the DOF but he came back with a good deal. The £120k was only £40k upfront with the rest in installments after raking in £11.5m on sales spending £140k isn’t going to hurt.

Halme

Out

Another youngster leaves, I don’t mind as it shows our youth development is working well, £1.5m plus 25% of his next sale was too good to turn down.

Future Transfer

My number one striker target will join this summer on a free after the DOF wrapped up a deal for him to join when his contract ends. The only downside is the 20% of his sell on fee goes to Walker.

Walker

We need more options upfront, Samuel is doing better this season but Barnes hasn’t really got going. But with no real youth coming through upfront we needed another body. Walker will probably slide in as the first choice.

Balance 

The cost of Championship football, bigger wages etc on top of the debt is showing, We made an £11.5m profit on sales in the summer which gave us a head start and we.re already down to £4m remaining. We will need to keep selling going forward whilst remaining competitive.

Tactics

A post is on the way I’ve been asked by a few and I am writing the post hopefully it will be finished soon.

Conclusion

An improvement on last season already we now have to push on these last 16 games and finish as high as possible but the strength of the division is crazy if you look at the clubs in it. Teams are spending £15m on one player so I think we will be in the Championship for a while.

Thanks for reading and we will be back at the end of the season.