Pied and Prejudice, Wigan (A) 27/02/04.

[Mar]

My main gripe with last night was it's a pattern that's repeating and 90 minutes of doing the same thing has yielded the same result. A little bit of tweaking around the edges may just go a long way to resolving our issues.

Aye, and a bit of Shooting practise might help..

Not too sure it would. We've been unable to get the balls through to the strikers for them to have any significant impact. Even those performing the shooting drills just weren't getting the balls to be able to do anything with it. If anything they had their backs to the goal acting as a foil for Sheehan or the wing backs.

If the strikers got the ball in a position to shoot from, we'd get better outputs.

[officer_dibble]

There’s a lot of thinking going on here…for me:

Is Wigan a Derby game? Yes
Were they in the deep shit this summer and had to cobble together a squad, which includes fat wanker Magennis as captain? Yes
Do we have a more expensive squad in terms of salaries and transfer fees? Undoubtedly yes
Is losing twice, 5-0 across two games, acceptable to me as a Bolton fan? No!
Were our players brave enough in either game? No
Has the manager made them play to a rigid system that made the players afraid to take risks? I think so.
Is our system found lacking when opponents sit deep or press high, potentially because the players are not good enough to play pound shop pep football consistently enough? Potentially yes.
Do we need a better plan B than chuck jerome on for Sheehan? Yes
Should we have our £6million pound wingback on the bench who might be able to cross a ball better rather than 3 strikers with 2 league goals between them? Yes.
Do I feel let down by players and management last two games? 100% yes

[Prufrock]

Comparing the good stuff of one manager against the bad of another is hardly fair.

I loved Parky, but the bad stuff under him was as bad as I've ever seen. There were plenty awful, awful games.

I think you have to take a wider view. And within that of course people have their views on what they'd rather watch. I love the style of modern football, but it's not for everyone, that's fine.

What I would say though, is if you haven't enjoyed the last few years at all, I can't get my head around that. I loved the second half of the L2 season, Cambridge at home a particular high, I loved we were hunting it down and time after time pulled out results. There have been some great times in L1 too, and the Wembley final was superb. We scored 100+ goals in the last calendar year.

The last 4 years have been far more enjoyable to me than the preceding 10, give or take.

[BWFC_Insane]

I think my ultimate point is that we can debate styles and eras all day long. But bottom line is that no manager is immune to the need to ultimately deliver success. For Bolton Wanderers success simply isn’t playing ‘nice’ football in league one and handing out the occasional heating to some minnows and losing biannually or twice annually or whatever it is to Wigan.

Thats not going to cut it. Not with the money we’ve spent or the size of crowds we get and the expectation.

At least for me. That’s not going to work - season after season of this isn’t where the club needs to be.

Comparison with other managers at least on my part is to show that. Ultimately what will matter is our success in the league and moving up. The rest becomes a footnote.

[Bertie Wooster]

The lack of tactical flexibility is hurting us i.e. Evatt's tactical ability / naivety

I know that he's obsessed with 5-3-2, but in games like last night when the opposition have no real intention of attacking and are ultra defensive, do we really need 3 CB's - surely last night after it was obvious they where set up to let us have the ball & just defend he could have brought on another attacker for a CB early on or another midfielder for a CB switching to 4-3-3 or 4-4-2. The Sheehan for Jerome sub was absolutely shocking and just killed the game. Also when we are chasing the game with 5 mins left why on earth are Santos & Toal wasting time with pointless tippy tappy 'to me to you' passing when its obvious that they where not going to entice Wigan out near the end. It's these robotic, inflexible tactics that let Evatt down on quite a few occasions.

Its absolute insanity doing the same thing game after game when its clearly not working and expecting different results.

[officer_dibble]

Is that stat about JDB not touching the ball in twenty minutes on Tuesday legit? I can’t recall him having a touch…

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Is that stat about JDB not touching the ball in twenty minutes on Tuesday legit? I can’t recall him having a touch…

Did JDB even come on?

https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/17324 ... gan-Bolton


Perhaps the most damning stat from Tuesday is that we had 11 efforts on goal - and Toal topped that chart (joint with Sheehan) with 3.

[officer_dibble]

Is that stat about JDB not touching the ball in twenty minutes on Tuesday legit? I can’t recall him having a touch…

JDB didn't touch the ball at all, he didn't come on... JDC?

https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/17324 ... gan-Bolton

JDC's touch map is here - if you go to the site you can slice by minute chunks but you can see the timeline at the bottom that he touched it regularly, if not necessarily effectively.
.
Screenshot 2024-02-29 at 13.17.21.png

Bodvarson came on straight after the goal

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Bodvarson came on straight after the goal

Christ so he did!! Hang on

Aye literally zero touches

Screenshot 2024-02-29 at 13.22.20.png (1.12 MiB) Viewed 304 times

[Tails07]

Is that stat about JDB not touching the ball in twenty minutes on Tuesday legit? I can’t recall him having a touch…

Seems like it 0 touches to Jerome's 3... According to WhoScored.

Top of the passing and touches charts, the 3 centre backs.

[officer_dibble]

Jesus. That’s awful.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Is that stat about JDB not touching the ball in twenty minutes on Tuesday legit? I can’t recall him having a touch…

Seems like it 0 touches to Jerome's 3... According to WhoScored.

Top of the passing and touches charts, the 3 centre backs.

You'd definitely expect that, that's far from unusual - even possession-phobic or long-ball sides can have high centre-back touch numbers because they tend to be more unopposed. Longballers will have fewer CB passes because they won't tip or tap before hoofing. Although sometimes the fullbacks have higher numbers.

Anyway, the fact that our two sub forwards touched the ball 3 times in a combined 31 minutes plus injury time shows how utterly unpenetrative we were after WIgan scored

[Worthy4England]

TBF we bought one of them on, whilst taking off one of the people who might give them the ball. Least they kept the GD down.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

TBF we bought one of them on, whilst taking off one of the people who might give them the ball.

Very definitely so, as I've said at length. You can have eight forwards standing in the box but they won't touch the ball much if no bugger's there to pass to them.

[officer_dibble]

I don’t get the use of Jerome if you aren’t just going to wallop it into the box desperation style to be honest. Using him as a sub and not changing the style is on that list of things that baffle me about Bolton. But really disappointed in JDB - that suggests he didn’t look for the ball either - he was on 20-25 minutes.

[BWFC_Insane]

I don’t get the use of Jerome if you aren’t just going to wallop it into the box desperation style to be honest. Using him as a sub and not changing the style is on that list of things that baffle me about Bolton. But really disappointed in JDB - that suggests he didn’t look for the ball either - he was on 20-25 minutes.

I think the issue is quite clear. We passed it sideways at the back. Then out to the wingbacks. Then back into midfield. The back to the wingbacks. Then back to the centre halves….

The strikers especially second half and last twenty minutes didn’t have much to work on because we seemed intent on playing the ball slowly to nowhere.

[Bertie Wooster]

I don’t get the use of Jerome if you aren’t just going to wallop it into the box desperation style to be honest. Using him as a sub and not changing the style is on that list of things that baffle me about Bolton. But really disappointed in JDB - that suggests he didn’t look for the ball either - he was on 20-25 minutes.

I think the issue is quite clear. We passed it sideways at the back. Then out to the wingbacks. Then back into midfield. The back to the wingbacks. Then back to the centre halves….

The strikers especially second half and last twenty minutes didn’t have much to work on because we seemed intent on playing the ball slowly to nowhere.

So the question has to be - is that down to the managers instructions to not get the ball into the box as much as possible being 1-0 down & just continue to arse about with the tippy tappy shite at the back or is it a lack of desire by the players to put Wigan under as much pressure as possible to try and get back into the game. Why wasn't Evatt urging the players to stop arsing about at the back and bring the strikers into the game more and much quicker, and if he was does that mean the players just ignored him - its baffling.

[officer_dibble]

I think the problem is the players were not empowered to think for themselves and abandon the system to change the game. I am sure Evatt was thinking get the ball in the box more - hence why Sheehan went off for Jerome. But there is a coaching failure that meant they weren’t comfortable doing that.

[Bertie Wooster]

I think the problem is the players were not empowered to think for themselves and abandon the system to change the game. I am sure Evatt was thinking get the ball in the box more - hence why Sheehan went off for Jerome. But there is a coaching failure that meant they weren’t comfortable doing that.

This just backs up my view that we have a team of robots.

[Prufrock]

Taking off Sheehan's probing meant our passing got even safer, largely out to the wing back. What you then want is for them to drop a shoulder and hit the line, or drive inside, or look for a one two, but they were shagged, and we didn't manage to make any 2v1s ,(partly because our "two 8s" were now deeper with Collins at 10).