Will it be Heaven in Devon for the Magnificent eleven? Away to Exeter, 3-0'clock Good Friday.

[TANGODANCER]

Not to interrupt our celebration party, but we need to keep focus on League business, so I'm starting the match thread a bit early. Easter is the most important time for millions of Christians, can the Whites celebrate it with them? Momentum is everything in football and we have to face Cambridge on Monday at the Unibol too, so easy on the chocolate eggs and Pizzas, and football heads back on soldiers... .

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Last time we won a Pizza Cup game, we went flat for a month. That can't happen now. If those boys want more wonderful Wembley memories, they know what to do.

Considering how well we played, it's intriguing to try to guess what happens next. We have Exeter on Friday then Cambridge (H) on Monday, and Evatt has a history of at least half-rotating his teams at Easter, even when the backups were bobbins. Now we have the Wembley winners – including three who returned from injury off the bench (Johnston, Thomason, MJ) – augmented by Adeboyejo, Nlundulu, Shoretire and Mbete.

Exeter are the division's slowest team at coming forward, but that doesn't mean they're defensive – they've scored 6 more than us and conceded 20 more. It's almost certainly a harder game than Cambridge at home, not that we'll be taking anything lightly, but you might expect Monday's opponents to 'camp in' a little more.

I think that will guide our thinking for the two XIs and I would also expect to see full use of the subs' bench in both games. It's a fair assumption that we have a better squad than either opponent, and with Kachunga presumably buoyant, we have five forwards to choose from. I'd probably expect Dion to start both games but be hooked on the hour, with the other four contenders rotating in and out.

[TonyDomingos]

From Super Sunday to Good Friday.

Risk here that it is "after the Lord mayor's parade". They've won their last four home games, including beating Barnsley 3-1 (Barnsley's only defeat in 14). I think I'd be happy with a point.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Actually I'll immediately correct myself. His first Easter, Evatt only made two changes from his Good Friday team –

Gilks; Jones, Santos, Baptiste, John; Williams, Lee; Gnahoua (Elbouzedi 61'), Delfouneso (Maddison 61'), Afolayan (Miller 69'); Doyle

- to his Easter Monday team:

Gilks, Jones, Santos, Baptiste, John; Williams (Elbouzedi 72), Thomason; Isgrove (Afolayan 72), Lee, Delfouneso (Maddison 72); Doyle

However, it's notable that the first lot drew 0-0 at home to drop-dodging Colchester and the second lot lost 1-0 at Newport, thus ending a run of WDWWWWWWDWWWW in rather worrying style.

By the following Easter, things were a bit different. We had a deeper squad but after a strong Jan/Feb, a run of W1 D4 L1 had ended hopes of a playoff push.

Good Friday's team was:
Trafford; Jones, Aimson, Johnston, John; Morley, Williams; Sadlier, Thomason (Afolayan 74), Bodvarsson (Kachunga 74); Bakayoko (Charles 66)

Easter Monday brought an entire new front four:
Trafford; Jones, Aimson, Johnston, John; Morley, Williams; Amaechi (Sadlier 65), Kachunga (Bodvarsson 67), Afolayan; Charles (Bakayoko 66)

On that occasion, we won both - 2-1 at Donny, 3-1 home to Accy - then finished the season off with another two wins. Let's hope this Easter is a similar springboard: Donny was our first win on Good Friday since 1963....

[BWFC_Insane]

It’s all mentality for me. We have just won the cup. In scintillating style. How much focus had that taken?

We can all say ‘yep we want to work now to be back here in May’ of course it’s easy to say. Rather harder to do.

They rightly deserved all the plaudits and celebration for that win.

But the best teams use things like that to kick on.

As DSB says we slumped after the semi final win and that simply isn’t an option this time round if we want to get the top 6. Use this to really build that determined focus and go and win the next two. For me that’s how we’ve got to try and use it. Easy to say. But there can be no illusion that it could probably go either way from here.

No matter what happens I’d rather have us going into the run in off a cup win than a big cup loss. But football is a funny old game sometimes.

[Worthy4England]

I think you raised an interesting point about "consistency" and the fact we were able to hit a high bar for the Cup Final game. I didn't want to sully the Wembley thread with with the discussion, but for me part of what you're paying for in a top player is that you know they can deliver the consistency week in week out - in fact that's pretty much the bulk of what you're paying for.

We all know someone (or played with someone) or maybe it was us, that scored a worldie, got a hat-trick at a sport, shot a 180 (preferably at darts rather than golf - albeit I'm fairly sure I've been near 180 at the latter ). etc. We probably know folks that had good games, maybe a good couple of games. But the differentiation, for me, is the ability to repeat it game-in, game-out with the regularity of the Burnley Lara, dropping it right on the spot.

I think we have a high bar we can reach, on our day, agree with your match comment, that we can beat anyone in this Division. But. When it comes to the top sides, we often don't and when it comes to the bottom sides, we slip up/drop points too often. I just hope we can take the momentum into that final push. There's still ~20% of the season left, in terms of games to play - long way to go. Just COYWM.

[BWFC_Insane]

I think you raised an interesting point about "consistency" and the fact we were able to hit a high bar for the Cup Final game. I didn't want to sully the Wembley thread with with the discussion, but for me part of what you're paying for in a top player is that you know they can deliver the consistency week in week out - in fact that's pretty much the bulk of what you're paying for.

We all know someone (or played with someone) or maybe it was us, that scored a worldie, got a hat-trick at a sport, shot a 180 (preferably at darts rather than golf - albeit I'm fairly sure I've been near 180 at the latter ). etc. We probably know folks that had good games, maybe a good couple of games. But the differentiation, for me, is the ability to repeat it game-in, game-out with the regularity of the Burnley Lara, dropping it right on the spot.

I think we have a high bar we can reach, on our day, agree with your match comment, that we can beat anyone in this Division. But. When it comes to the top sides, we often don't and when it comes to the bottom sides, we slip up/drop points too often. I just hope we can take the momentum into that final push. There's still ~20% of the season left, in terms of games to play - long way to go. Just COYWM.

Yeah a few things on this.

1) We are at least not Keegan''s Newcastle - in that when the big game came around and really mattered we DID turn up.

2) I still think more of our issue is NOT the players dipping - we know that happens to everyone. Its more the way we are often asked to play requires absolute perfection. It requires us to be like Sunday. On it from minute one. Every player doing their job perfectly, the first touches coming off, the chances going in. I think that we go too high and then dip too low as a group - partly because we struggle on that 'in between' sort of a game as you've identified where we aren't going to or able to blow a team away and either cos they are a bit good or just awkward on a small pitch. Those are the games I ask - how do we win these without necessarily being brilliant at everything on the day (as that won't always happen). And if you go back to past promotions we've always had ways of winning without actually needing to play well.

This team has won games we haven't played well in - of course we have - but I don't feel there is a methodology. Allardyce would ask us to stay in the game then bring Ricketts on to almost always score. Failing that he'd bring big Ian Marshall on and we'd just lob balls up towards the end of games. And often again that would get us the reward. Parky had the delivery from the Postman and the big lads from the back to nod one in - again usually after we'd been far from sparkling. Todd's side had a hard edge when we couldn't play or get going in Sellars, Pollock, Fairclough, Taggart and we could bully sides when needed to win games when our fluency wasn't there.

But this side to me doesn't have that method. Defensively we've broadly been ok but I don't see many scoring options when we're not 'on it'.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

I think you raised an interesting point about "consistency" and the fact we were able to hit a high bar for the Cup Final game. I didn't want to sully the Wembley thread with with the discussion, but for me part of what you're paying for in a top player is that you know they can deliver the consistency week in week out - in fact that's pretty much the bulk of what you're paying for.

We all know someone (or played with someone) or maybe it was us, that scored a worldie, got a hat-trick at a sport, shot a 180 (preferably at darts rather than golf - albeit I'm fairly sure I've been near 180 at the latter ). etc. We probably know folks that had good games, maybe a good couple of games. But the differentiation, for me, is the ability to repeat it game-in, game-out with the regularity of the Burnley Lara, dropping it right on the spot.

I think we have a high bar we can reach, on our day, agree with your match comment, that we can beat anyone in this Division. But. When it comes to the top sides, we often don't and when it comes to the bottom sides, we slip up/drop points too often. I just hope we can take the momentum into that final push. There's still ~20% of the season left, in terms of games to play - long way to go. Just COYWM.

Aye. I think I've quoted this before, from The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, but it's worth repeating:

Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn’t matter how beautifully you performed sometimes, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren’t a painter or a writer - you didn’t work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn’t just your masterpieces that counted. What mattered, as for any machine, was repeatability. Moments of inspiration were nothing compared to elimination of error.

Much as I admire and applaud how we played on Sunday, I still say Plymouth's game was riddled with errors. Forced errors, perhaps, brought about through us being thoroughly 'on it' – but errors nonetheless. 1st goal poor marking. 2nd goal defenders wandering about apparently blind to our runners. 3rd goal Butcher basically lobs his team mate to send Kacha through. 4th goal poor marking - Geth was about three inches off the ground when he scored.

All those errors have been part of our game before, and maybe they will rear their ugly faces again, but one of the underheralded success stories of this season has been how much tighter, how much less sloppy we've been. Last season we conceded 1.24 goals per game. This year it's down to 0.55. That's huge credit to our players and staff.

[knobpolisher]

Not seen an update on Toal maybe have to wait for the Wed/Thu news conference

[TANGODANCER]

Without making a War and Peace document by repeating quotes, nature has a way of screwing all the stats up. J.R. Williams and Jon Bodvarson are two good examples of the unexpected that can happen to best laid plans of mice and managers, albeit through injury, but nothing is permanent game to game or season to season. There are players in our current team ( just like any league including the Prem) who blow hot and cold and not necessarily through injury. Football is just as big a game of chance as roulette.

Amen.

[BWFC_Insane]

Not seen an update on Toal maybe have to wait for the Wed/Thu news conference

I will be amazed and delighted in equal measure if he plays again this season.

[Prufrock]

I think you raised an interesting point about "consistency" and the fact we were able to hit a high bar for the Cup Final game. I didn't want to sully the Wembley thread with with the discussion, but for me part of what you're paying for in a top player is that you know they can deliver the consistency week in week out - in fact that's pretty much the bulk of what you're paying for.

We all know someone (or played with someone) or maybe it was us, that scored a worldie, got a hat-trick at a sport, shot a 180 (preferably at darts rather than golf - albeit I'm fairly sure I've been near 180 at the latter ). etc. We probably know folks that had good games, maybe a good couple of games. But the differentiation, for me, is the ability to repeat it game-in, game-out with the regularity of the Burnley Lara, dropping it right on the spot.

I think we have a high bar we can reach, on our day, agree with your match comment, that we can beat anyone in this Division. But. When it comes to the top sides, we often don't and when it comes to the bottom sides, we slip up/drop points too often. I just hope we can take the momentum into that final push. There's still ~20% of the season left, in terms of games to play - long way to go. Just COYWM.

Aye. I think I've quoted this before, from The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, but it's worth repeating:

Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn’t matter how beautifully you performed sometimes, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren’t a painter or a writer - you didn’t work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn’t just your masterpieces that counted. What mattered, as for any machine, was repeatability. Moments of inspiration were nothing compared to elimination of error.

Much as I admire and applaud how we played on Sunday, I still say Plymouth's game was riddled with errors. Forced errors, perhaps, brought about through us being thoroughly 'on it' – but errors nonetheless. 1st goal poor marking. 2nd goal defenders wandering about apparently blind to our runners. 3rd goal Butcher basically lobs his team mate to send Kacha through. 4th goal poor marking - Geth was about three inches off the ground when he scored.

All those errors have been part of our game before, and maybe they will rear their ugly faces again, but one of the underheralded success stories of this season has been how much tighter, how much less sloppy we've been. Last season we conceded 1.24 goals per game. This year it's down to 0.55. That's huge credit to our players and staff.

As Aaron McLean described it at half time "Bolton have forced a lot of unforced errors here".

My suspicion is the dip was mainly legs. We'd gone Saturday Tuesday for a long time without really being able to make changes in key areas. Most had two weeks off and they looked fresh again. That plus players back hopefully heralds a strong finish.

[brommers95]

Would be rude of Exeter to beat us after we’ve just embarrassed their archrivals at Wembley on national TV

[TonyDomingos]

Would be rude of Exeter to beat us after we’ve just embarrassed their arch rivals at Wembley on national TV

Noooo. We didn't embarrass them. The fact that they were four down after an hour and their supporters were leaving in droves was simply unlucky.

[DJBlu]

A performance is going to be required. It's that simple. Turn up and we'll give em a game.

[officer_dibble]

Not seen an update on Toal maybe have to wait for the Wed/Thu news conference

I’ll be happy if he makes pre season.

[Mar]

Perhaps the dip was to avoid injury in the lead up to the final, which was then replaced with a strong mentality against Sheffield Wednesday to showcase were as good as anyone in this division.

After that tally ho. Gloves off or whatever.

Hopefully they'll want to repeat the Wembley trip by going all out till the end of the season.

Weve just got to avoid complacency at this point given we're facing all teams that are outside the play offs from here on in.

[BWFC_Insane]

Unsurprising news that Toal's season is over.

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/2 ... ne-season/

The thing is Evatt says 'we are now light there' but we have Mbete and Johnston - so one cover for the three positions. Which isn't ideal - but is also the same situation we've had more or less since January.

The issue is probably that Aimson's replacement should have been someone a bit more proven and experienced than young Luke. Hopefully that's a learning moment for Evatt. I think we have left ourselves short by not recruiting experience.

It does leave the question as to what we do should we get another injury or two back there - MJ emergency centre half? Any of the youngsters up to playing in the biggest of games in the run in? Could Cameron Jerome even do a job back there?

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Unsurprising news that Toal's season is over.

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/2 ... ne-season/

The thing is Evatt says 'we are now light there' but we have Mbete and Johnston - so one cover for the three positions. Which isn't ideal - but is also the same situation we've had more or less since January.

The issue is probably that Aimson's replacement should have been someone a bit more proven and experienced than young Luke. Hopefully that's a learning moment for Evatt. I think we have left ourselves short by not recruiting experience.

It does leave the question as to what we do should we get another injury or two back there - MJ emergency centre half? Any of the youngsters up to playing in the biggest of games in the run in? Could Cameron Jerome even do a job back there?

MJ would be less terrifying as one of the two outside centre-backs in a three than he would as one of two in the middle of a back four. But he still lacks pace.

[The_Gun]

FFS, that's so annoying.

I think Toal is a big loss for us - big enough that it puts a dent in our hopes of keeping our play off position. He's been superb for us since coming into the team, and our back line is less physically intimidating with Jones at RCB.