Nice to be wombling again! - Wimbledon (A) 13/08/16

[officer_dibble]

Midfield looks weak...in fairness, without shifting an 'earner' I can't see what parky can do here. There is no way signing another centre mid would be sanctioned. Vela needs to start showing his worth, for sure.

[Burnden Paddock]

Parkinson proved his worth with that win. He's not going to turn this lot around in a couple of months but his signings on the whole so far, look pretty good. Beevers and Wheater look good together. Proctor worked his socks off and today I really liked the look of Buxton. Midfield still looks weak but he's not afraid to use his subs and change things around, where other managers may have settled for a point from the last few years are encouraging.

Totally agree with that assessment. Only thing to add is that we have way too many passengers.

That has to rank as one of the worst views in 38 years of watching BWFC. Once the ball was over the halfway line you could barely see a thing up the other end.

Finally. I have just applied a third coating of after sun! The stewards stopped us from moving along the terrace and under cover, despite later reports that there was loads of room towards the halfway line, leaving hundreds of pasty northerners to burn in the sun!

[TonyDomingos]

I had a ticket for behind the goal Wimbledon were attacking in the first half. At half time, I wandered into the Bolton end (side) and stood with DSB close to the half way line. Not the greatest view, but shaded and a great atmosphere. BP, was it you who threw the flare?

[TonyDomingos]

I'm going to this. Not expecting to see our first away win in over 16 months.

So am I. And me neither.
Especially after tonight. And with your record!

Dunno what you're talking about.

[LeverEnd]

I'm going to this. Not expecting to see our first away win in over 16 months.

So am I. And me neither.
Especially after tonight. And with your record!

Dunno what you're talking about.

I'm the new Jonah. 6 away defeats in a row, decided not to go.and look what happened? I'll stick to home games.

[twilight]

I have just watched the highlights again. Why has Zach Clough no sponsor on his shirt. Has it faded in the wash already, or is he not big enough to wear an adult one yet

[Worthy4England]

Lol. Maybe folks thought he wouldn't still be playing for us.

[Burnden Paddock]

I had a ticket for behind the goal Wimbledon were attacking in the first half. At half time, I wandered into the Bolton end (side) and stood with DSB close to the half way line. Not the greatest view, but shaded and a great atmosphere. BP, was it you who threw the flare?

How the feck do people get these things into the ground? Everyone was patted down on the way in. I dread to think where they're hiding them! More to the point, what exactly is the point of them? Knobheads!

[bobo the clown]

I have just watched the highlights again. Why has Zach Clough no sponsor on his shirt. Has it faded in the wash already, or is he not big enough to wear an adult one yet

Fancy going halves with me twiggy ?

[Enoch]

We're now going to lose 10-0 thanks to Mr Enoch.

Sh*thouse

Well he's picked a team that was playing in the Essex pub league three seasons ago

Surrey pub league, actually.

[Montreal Wanderer]

http://www.skysports.com/watch/video/10 ... 1-2-bolton

Goals.

Was Trotter there from a previous corner?

Goals for ex-pats.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyd5ODq ... e=youtu.be" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[thebish]

this is what celebrating a Bolton away win looks like - for anyone younger than 62yrs who has never seen one!

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Cycling to a 3pm Saturday kick-off would be quintessentially olde-England even if my route hadn’t taken me past Hampton Court Palace. The drift down from the gilded splendour of the two-faced royal pile to the gritty tower blocks around the ground might have matched our slide from the Prem to the Third, but I didn’t mind. I earned my fan-badges travelling round England watching us in the Third Division (or lower); to me it’s not a foreign country, just one I haven’t visited in a while.

And it’s not a bad place. There’s a bike rack at Kingsmeadow (or the Cherry Red Records Stadium), and fans mingle contentedly in the bar. Whatever the division it’s always a pleasure to meet up with the similarly-shirted Tony Domingos – Perry Freds at the Cherry Red – and for the first time since Owen Coyle was in charge I met my old mate Keeebaaab, once of these pages. They were even more in their element at a non-league ground – Tony’s a regular non-league spectator, Keeebaaab’s coached there – and the conversation was pleasantly excited rather than irritatingly entitled.

Into the ground, with one end sponsored by an author, one end by Chemflow; this could go either way. Shallow terrace with poor sight-lines but a good roof: architecturally pleasing concrete, acoustically excellent. Bolton fans in good number and voice.

Then the football happened. By choice or circumstance, Parkinson had gone for a diamond midfield with two target men, Gary Madine and Jamie Proctor. As any fule no, that might leave you a little lacking in wide attack, especially if your full-backs aren’t in tip-top shape; Lewis Buxton is still catching up his fitness, while Dean Moxey was perhaps surprisingly preferred to new boy Andrew Taylor despite a two-hour midweek workout at Blackpool.

Wimbledon came at us, as they would, but most of their attacks foundered on the twin headlands of David Wheater and Mark Beevers. Like many a lower-league team, Wimbledon had grabbed the tallest idiot they could find and thrown him a No.9 shirt in the hope enough things would bounce off him towards the goal. They usually didn’t. As is the way, the opponents’ fans worried that he was “dominating our defence” but his only effort of noted came off his face and wide. At one point late in the first period, a clever free-kick routine reached him and he laid it back to nobody.

By that point Wimbledon had taken the lead through a slick passing manoeuvre, the only time they identified Wheater’s weakness (clue: it isn’t in the air). Despite what the tanked-up terrace tantrummers said, Bolton didn’t lack effort so much as an outlet; on several occasions one of the four midfielders would use his superior technique to gain a yard, look up to spread it wide and see nothing but a stand full of spectators and an unoccupied opposition full-back.

Thankfully, Parkinson noticed it and encouraged his players to spread wider. There was no formation change, but the three midfielders in front of anchorman Jay Spearing took turns to pop up in wide attacking positions – and from one of these, Mark Davies (or, to give him his full terrace-tithead title, Mark DaviesYouF*ckingMercenary) created the equaliser for Madine. Driving in from the left wing like a man who hadn’t played two hours in midweek, the midfielder found The Machine, whose somewhat mis-hit shot confused under-pressure home goalkeeper Ryan Clarke into diving over the ball. He was probably expecting your average powerful shot, but Madine wasn’t complaining, even if his golf-shot celebration was somewhat shame-faced.

From there, despite the odd scare, Bolton were the better team. As I typed in a halftime TW post which for some reason didn’t get through, “We have the better players, we just need to get them into positions to affect the game”. To that end, Proctor started to pull on to the inexperienced left-back Sean Kelly as an outlet for raking diagonals, while Davies, Josh Vela and Liam Trotter started to use the ball more productively – recycling through Spearing with a sense of purpose rather than a lack of options – and full-backs Moxey and Buxton became increasingly involved.

With 30 minutes to go, Parkinson acted again. Having clocked up three hours’ gametime this week, Davies was replaced by Zach Clough, for some reason in a sponsorless shirt (does he wear a child’s size?). Replacing a forward with a midfielder, Bolton were now playing more of a chevronned 4-3-3, with Clough behind Madine pulling left and Proctor right, leaving the Dons’ centre-backs with rotating duties and decisions – come out to the little guy? Pull wide to the big guy? Again, whether by player availability or conscious choice, Parkinson was changing the flow of the game.

Ten minutes later, it was time to change again as Chris Taylor replaced Vela, who had topped four hours’ football in eight days after his unscheduled 95 midweek minutes followed the full term against Sheffield United. Now Bolton had three forwards and a winger on the pitch, but before we could work out the new system, within a minute of Taylor’s arrival the Wanderers were in front. This time maligned Madine made the goal, tearing down the right and crossing to give Clough a tap-in; the rusty youngster fluffed his lines but there was Yaya Trotter at the back stick. His game had begun by miscontrolling a dropping ball into touch from the centre-circle, but the inconsistent Ipswichian has worked well at this level before and may yet do so again.

He may yet have to. Despite the plethora (an oft-misused noun meaning not ‘plenty’ but ‘an excessive amount’) of expensive central midfielders in the squad, we ended up with just the one on the pitch – the typically busy Spearing flanked by out-of-position Taylors after the somewhat surprising 85th-minute replacement of Trotter with new left-back Andrew.

By then, the emotions on the away terrace were a mix of Christmas Eve enthusiasm and death-row fear; every successful clearance a climax, every won throw-in a cause for air-punching, with Parkinson visibly telling the tremulous travelling Trotters fans to ‘keep the ball’ when it landed among them. Looked at dispassionately, the Dons were done and out of ideas; the fans were far more nervous than the players, but the sheer joy upon the final whistle soon transmitted to the players.

Half a dozen of today’s 14 participants had very little responsibility for the 495 days of hurt: Howard, Buxton, Beevers, Proctor and both Taylors now have a 100% away win record in the league with Bolton, while the other summer signing Wheater did as much as anyone to deny the Dons.

As for the remaining relegation survivors, Parkinson is certainly seeing what he can do with them. Those who had shouted down the boozy boo-boys felt sweet justification (atop the obvious relief and joy) when the goals were scored by prime terrace targets Madine and Trotter, with the first set up by the distrusted Davies. Parky may prefer to move some of these on but unlike his recent predecessors he doesn’t seem to be excluding anyone and his demanding workload may lead to rehabilitation by rotation as players take their turn.

It might not have been like this. An elated Tony Domingos noted that the win felt like a watershed but it could have gone the other way. At 1-0 down the terrace bickering between cat-callers and get-behind-the-teamers was growing increasingly spiteful in tone; had this game not ended well, it would have been lumped with the League Cup defeat as plain evidence of further decline.

As it is, we can look to the future with a modicum of confidence. The diamond-and-twin-targets set-up might offer one kind of solution, but more crucially we seem to have a manager who is ready to try different things, not just in formation but in style, and he will soon have more attacking options upon which to call: Clough might start at Bristol Rovers, Max Clayton is ready to reappear, and I have no doubt we will recruit the odd fast forward to increase our options.

Last time we won away, as Keeebaaab noted, Caitlin Jenner had a cock and we hadn’t heard the one about David Cameron and a pig. We haven’t won away since before Ireland legalised same-sex marriage, before the Paris attacks, before the VW emissions scandal, before the discovery of water on Mars, before the deaths of Jimmy Hill, Johan Cruyff, Pavel Srnicek, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Cilla Black, Lemmy, Muhammad Ali, George Martin, Wes Craven, Terry Wogan and Rowdy Roddy Piper.

Last time we won away from a goal behind, we were still in the Premier League, although only for another month: the 2-1 victory at Villa in April 2012 was our last of the season. That’s an entire Olympiad ago, but you get the sneaking suspicion we won’t have to wait as long again, should Parkinson’s carefully-prepared defence be breached early again. Two games is a small sample size but under new management Bolton seem newly able to cope with life’s vicissitudes without collapsing into witless anger, bleak despair or meek surrender, in reverse chronological order of our last three managers. Every football fan must have hope, else we wouldn’t be able to carry on, but as confidence returns maybe, just maybe, we can start to set out on away trips in justified expectation.

[BWFC_Insane]

Nice write up DSB though it was Proctor was it not who created the second?

[thebish]

I'm gonna have to watch it back as I am now doubting myself - but the first - as i remember it - came from a fortunate deflected attempted clearance from which Mavis got a lucky bounce... you still have to find a team-mate and capitalise on the situation - which he did, and he found madine through a jumble of legs who dribbled it gloriously over the line!

[Burnden Paddock]

I'm just setting off and should be in the bar at the ground by 1:15pm. Hope to see one or two of you there. I'm the bronzed Adonis in a white Fred Perry if you want to say hello!

Whereas I'll be in a dark blue Fred Perry with yellow and light blue trim... Not an Adonis.

There is someone else here in a white Fred Perry. He's not me.

Is there some 1980's Perry throwback going on down South? Have you all got flickers, too?

Must have been something in the water. I was wearing a blue and white hooped Fred Perry t-shirt! Also rocking a pair of shorts, replete with pasty white legs! Fortunately for everyone concerned, not the 1992-93 navy blue home shorts!

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Nice write up DSB though it was Proctor was it not who created the second?

Fair point - made the mistake of believing the Press Association report carried by the BBC, but the video below shows it was indeed Proctor creating the second goal. Madine still scored though, which is nice.

I'm gonna have to watch it back as I am now doubting myself - but the first - as i remember it - came from a fortunate deflected attempted clearance from which Mavis got a lucky bounce... you still have to find a team-mate and capitalise on the situation - which he did, and he found madine through a jumble of legs who dribbled it gloriously over the line!

Even the longer highlights below (which show Madine managing to get the ball through a foot-wide window at the back of the stand) don't show much more of the build-up to that goal, but from the moment Davies gets wide and runs at the defence they're in trouble. He found Madine a lot more cleanly than Madine found the net, but I'll not be sending it back for ugliness.

I'm just setting off and should be in the bar at the ground by 1:15pm. I'm the bronzed Adonis in a white Fred Perry if you want to say hello!

Whereas I'll be in a dark blue Fred Perry with yellow and light blue trim... Not an Adonis.

There is someone else here in a white Fred Perry. He's not me.

Must have been something in the water. I was wearing a blue and white hooped Fred Perry t-shirt! Also rocking a pair of shorts, replete with pasty white legs! Fortunately for everyone concerned, not the 1992-93 navy blue home shorts!

I reckon it's a combination of things, BP. Clement weather tempts us into baring our elbows; but some of we - how can I put this - chaps of a certain age may tend to eschew the T-shirt for the polo. At least, I know I do.

[Burnden Paddock]

Nice write up DSB though it was Proctor was it not who created the second?

Fair point - made the mistake of believing the Press Association report carried by the BBC, but the video below shows it was indeed Proctor creating the second goal. Madine still scored though, which is nice.

I'm gonna have to watch it back as I am now doubting myself - but the first - as i remember it - came from a fortunate deflected attempted clearance from which Mavis got a lucky bounce... you still have to find a team-mate and capitalise on the situation - which he did, and he found madine through a jumble of legs who dribbled it gloriously over the line!

Even the longer highlights below (which show Madine managing to get the ball through a foot-wide window at the back of the stand) don't show much more of the build-up to that goal, but from the moment Davies gets wide and runs at the defence they're in trouble. He found Madine a lot more cleanly than Madine found the net, but I'll not be sending it back for ugliness.

I'm just setting off and should be in the bar at the ground by 1:15pm. I'm the bronzed Adonis in a white Fred Perry if you want to say hello!

Whereas I'll be in a dark blue Fred Perry with yellow and light blue trim... Not an Adonis.

There is someone else here in a white Fred Perry. He's not me.

Must have been something in the water. I was wearing a blue and white hooped Fred Perry t-shirt! Also rocking a pair of shorts, replete with pasty white legs! Fortunately for everyone concerned, not the 1992-93 navy blue home shorts!

I reckon it's a combination of things, BP. Clement weather tempts us into baring our elbows; but some of we - how can I put this - chaps of a certain age may tend to eschew the T-shirt for the polo. At least, I know I do.

Tbh it was a toss up between the FP t-shirt and FP polo shirt. The latter was left in the boot of the car in case I slopped my lunch down the former. As people of a certain age have a tendency to do. My carers kept me on the straight and narrow though!

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Tbh it was a toss up between the FP t-shirt and FP polo shirt. The latter was left in the boot of the car in case I slopped my lunch down the former. As people of a certain age have a tendency to do. My carers kept me on the straight and narrow though!

Yeah, I ended up with comestibles on mine, but it wasn't my fault. Tony D's a lovely fella but he literally can't hold his drink – twice he dropped the buggers!

[TonyDomingos]

Tbh it was a toss up between the FP t-shirt and FP polo shirt. The latter was left in the boot of the car in case I slopped my lunch down the former. As people of a certain age have a tendency to do. My carers kept me on the straight and narrow though!

Yeah, I ended up with comestibles on mine, but it wasn't my fault. Tony D's a lovely fella but he literally can't hold his drink – twice he dropped the buggers!