You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

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You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by boltonboris » Thu Sep 16, 2021 11:12 am

Might as well start my first Match Thread!

Home this weekend on the new owners inaugural Family Day - £10 tickets for Adults and £5 tickets for u18's / +65's. Can't grumble at prices like that!

Sold around 16,500 tickets, with 1100 away supports (must say I thought this would be close to a sell-out) but should be a good atmosphere and hopefully a good result against a tough team.

Last time out on Tuesday, they drew 1-1 at Lincoln after a mixed start - Statistically they look a good side. Concede few chances and are up there chances converted themselves

I'm hoping for a 2-1 Bolton win, but definitely not going on my Acca!!
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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by LeverEnd » Thu Sep 16, 2021 11:22 am

Excellent match thread title. Another win and another step on our route from the rubble to the Ritz. :oyea:
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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by BWFC_Insane » Thu Sep 16, 2021 11:25 am

Yeah Rotherham are a good side as you'd expect from one in the championship last season and by all accounts absolutely battered Lincoln on Tuesday but (like ourselves against Burton) only came away with a draw.

A physically strong pressing side who are good from set pieces and work very hard all over the pitch. Aerially they will test us too.

Probably will be our toughest game yet this against a side you'd expect to finish top 6 at worst and who weren't far off staying up in the championship last time out.

But we're on form and I'd hope we take that form into this one as I think at our best we'll be a big ask for any team. I'd agree that I'd not put any money on the result of this one it could go either way on the day. Want a win absolutely but I'd not be disappointed with a draw tbh. Don't play for a draw - but it wouldn't be the worst result.

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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by brommers95 » Thu Sep 16, 2021 12:02 pm

+1 for the thread title :oyea:

Win this and I'll start to truly believe we'll be up there come the end of the season. Will be very, very tough this one though as others have said.

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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by The_Gun » Thu Sep 16, 2021 1:50 pm

Any news on DJ? If he's fit there's a reasonably tough call for Evatt to make regarding who starts at LB. Rest of the team pretty much picks itself right now.

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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by Dave Sutton's barnet » Thu Sep 16, 2021 3:17 pm

Ha, I sang that thread title (or at least the start of it) the other night at band practice....

Seven games into the league season, Bolton are looking up. A 5-2 win at Ipswich made the division sit up and take notice and hoisted Bolton into third place, the position in which they gained promotion last season. Third place in the third tier isn’t enough for automatic elevation but it is enough for increased attention – and perhaps reassessed expectations.

Asked at the start of the season where they imagined Bolton would finish, Wanderers fans were split. Some suggested a second promotion, but more craved consolidation. There were fears over the better level of opponent, over the suitability of the new signings, and over the ability to transfer last season’s often fine margins.

Most of those fears have now been assuaged, beyond the odd quibble about defensive wobbles and attacking blanks. So is it possible that Bolton could launch a promotion campaign? And if so, what then?

The Championship is a financial death-strip between the unremunerative lower-league paddy fields and the ever-accelerating Premier League gravy train. Desperate clubs are throwing themselves at the lucrative locomotive, spending money they don’t have or can’t account for; as I write this, I’m being messaged by a mate who supports Derby, a fine old club who two years ago were one game from the promised land and are now in financial penury. We’ve been there and we don’t want a return ticket.

The other option seems encapsulated by Rotherham. They’ve also had their near-death moments: in 2005/6, while Bolton played in Europe, Millers fans marched and rattled buckets, with subsequent 10-point penalty and exile at the Don Valley Stadium.

Since then, the ownership of Tony Stewart has helped the Millers to find fiscal stability, but stability is the word: theirs is not a risk-based model. Six seasons in the fourth tier ended with consecutive promotions under Steve Evans; they then managed with two successive 21st-placed finishes in the Championship – the second under Neil Warnock, Steve Evans having left and quickly fetched up at Leeds.

Then came a bad season. With Warnock walking away, they turned to Alan Stubbs. It went badly, and he was gone by October. They replaced him with safe-hands Kenny Jackett, and he walked after five games, judging the job untenable.

In November 2016, they turned almost in desperation to Paul Warne, who’d played almost 300 games for the Millers before coaching there for five years. He couldn’t stop them going down but did enough to earn rolling one-year contract, which has never been in danger of non-renewal during five years of off-field stability and divisional yo-yoing.

Having gone down in 2017, they went up via the play-offs in 2018. Having gone down in 2019, they went up automatically in 2020. Having gone down in 2021, they were heavily tipped to go up again this season. Since the Stubbs experiment, each time they have refused to overspend in the second tier, and each time they have known the risks it means to their chance of staying up, but they know the club’s future is more important.

It’s a balancing act that might feature in Bolton’s future if promotion were to be achieved, and this game will be a good judge of that. Rotherham may be sat in 13th place but the teams are much closer than that 10-place gap implies.

For a start, they’re only two points behind Wanderers and would vault them with a win in what is a very tight division: the two-point gap from 3rd to 13th contrasts with five points in League Two and six in the Champo; in the polarised Prem, the same positions are already seven points apart after just four games.

And they’re also better than 13th suggests. Much better. In fact, they might even be the division’s best team. On Monday, an analytics Twitterer published a table of Expected Points - calculated by comparing each side’s xG to its opponents and calculating how many points they should have won. In this hypothetical table, Bolton were second, implying we’ve slightly underachieved considering the balance of our games. Wigan were 16th, implying they’ve had more jam than Hartley’s. And Rotherham were top.
. .
In the real world, Rotherham have had mixed results. They beat Plymouth, Morecambe and Doncaster to nil, but lost to Wigan, local rivals Sheffield Wednesday and relegation-tipped Fleetwood – despite having more efforts on goal in all those games.

Not taking chances is something Bolton know about, after blanks in possession-dominant games against Cambridge and Burton cost them five points. It seems Rotherham have the bug too, and Tuesday’s draw at Lincoln – their first shared spoils of the season – only underlined the point: the Millers had 19 shots to the home side’s 7, with 8 accurate efforts producing just the one goal from spearhead Michael Smith.

Smith has scored 5 of Rotherham’s 8 league goals (including 4 in his last 3 games) and will keep Ricardo Santos busy, even if he tries to pull onto the much less imposing George Johnston. But Smith isn’t alone up front.

Since last autumn Warne has favoured a back three which allows for a runner off him – usually Freddie Ladapo, who scored Rotherham’s second and fourth in the September 2019 excoriation of new Wanderers boss Keith Hill, or Joshua “wily” Kayode, who faced Bolton twice last season for Carlisle.

There is now another option, too. Will Grigg has come on for the final 20 minutes of the last two league games, having scored on his Millers debut in a 6-0 Sherpa Van Reserves Shield win for Rotherham at their humiliated rivals Doncaster. Grigg has endured a terrible time at Sunderland, who were happy to loan him to the Millers, but in third-tier 329 games he has scored 109. It would be typical if Rotherham were to take big-spending Sunderland’s cast-off and use him successfully. That’s the sort of thing they do. It’s no bad thing.

Style-wise, Rotherham are no Bolton – or at least, not Evatt’s Bolton. Whereas Wanderers have averaged 447 passes per game, Rotherham are around 275. But they aren’t just lump-and-hopers - Marc Iles noted earlier in the week https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/1 ... e-conquer/ that while they only average 57 passes in their own half, they average 127.5 in their opponents’. So they get it forward in order to play in the oppo’s camp – in some ways, not unlike the successful Wanderers side of Owen Coyle’s first year, which wasted little time using Kevin Davies’s mighty presence to establish a front-foot beach-head high up the pitch.

One potential worry for Bolton is that a good counter-attacking team could, one of these fine days, ruthlessly expose the potential shortfall in Bolton’s ability to cope with rapid transitions from attack to defence. MJ Williams is excelling as the lone protector for the centre-backs while the full-backs bomb on, but a wily opponent may yet find those spaces easy to exploit.

Then again, the Millers’ wide men will have other jobs to do. It will be interesting to see how Rotherham’s wingbacks counter the home side’s doubling uptown either flank; will Dapo Afolayan not only keep the right wingback defensively busy but tempt the right centre-back out of position to cover, thus creating a gap for Josh Sheehan and Antoni Sarcevic?

Where Rotherham are getting a lot of chances from is set pieces. Before the midweek game, our very own Brommers (aka BWFC Analysis) noted that 83.3% of Wanderers’ xG has come from open play, compared to 52.3% for Rotherham.
With such percentages, there’s no right or wrong way – a team either 100% reliant on set pieces or utterly toothless at them would be weaker than a happy blend – but it certainly suggests that “Smith header from a corner” might not be the world’s least predictable outcome. (To be fair to Smith, of his five goals, two have been left-footed and two right-footed, so the 6ft3 Geordie may be a previously well-hidden triple threat.)

With Rotherham as committed as their hosts to paying front-foot football, it could be a great game for a bumper crowd pulled in for the Family Fun Day. For all the laudable recent work off the field, on it Wanderers haven’t always done well at such games – including in the spring 2017 promotion push a frustrating 0-0, against a Chesterfield defence shepherded by Sam Hird, in which Bolton had 14 attempts but only one on target.

Such profligacy can be the difference between the good and the average. Let’s hope the next generation of Wanderers fans are cheered by seeing the home side score several, rather than battering ineffectively away before being beaten late on the counter.

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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by TANGODANCER » Thu Sep 16, 2021 4:56 pm

Glad you came up with a good match thread.B.B. I was struggling with Windy Millers :lol:
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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by Worthy4England » Thu Sep 16, 2021 4:59 pm

Another grand read DSB. Thanks mate. :-)

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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by Harry Genshaw » Thu Sep 16, 2021 5:39 pm

I think DSB pretty much covered everything there! Falling flat in front of a big crowd seems to be something we've managed too easily in the past. In Sams early days we were held by Grimsby and Birmingham in front of 20,000+ crowds and i can recall earlier examples. Hopefully we gain a new generation of followers after they've witnessed an exciting Wanderers win on Saturday
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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by TonyDomingos » Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:00 pm

Harry Genshaw wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 5:39 pm
I think DSB pretty much covered everything there! Falling flat in front of a big crowd seems to be something we've managed too easily in the past. In Sams early days we were held by Grimsby and Birmingham in front of 20,000+ crowds and i can recall earlier examples. Hopefully we gain a new generation of followers after they've witnessed an exciting Wanderers win on Saturday
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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by LeverEnd » Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:37 pm

There was that horrendous goalless snoozefest against 10 men Chesterfield under Parky as well. Brought a couple of people to that. Never saw them there again!
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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by Harry Genshaw » Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:40 pm

TonyDomingos wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:00 pm
Harry Genshaw wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 5:39 pm
I think DSB pretty much covered everything there! Falling flat in front of a big crowd seems to be something we've managed too easily in the past. In Sams early days we were held by Grimsby and Birmingham in front of 20,000+ crowds and i can recall earlier examples. Hopefully we gain a new generation of followers after they've witnessed an exciting Wanderers win on Saturday
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Harsh. I did say 'Hopefully'. I usually make Insane look optimistic! :D
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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by officer_dibble » Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:29 am

Should be good. Belting being able to look forward to every game, win lose or draw we will have a good go. Decent team Rotherham at this level and as long as it’s a good game we can cope with any result. Be nice if there was half a chance of the Bak being on the bench, he’s back in training but I suspect it’s too soon.

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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by BWFC_Insane » Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:30 am

officer_dibble wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 8:29 am
Should be good. Belting being able to look forward to every game, win lose or draw we will have a good go. Decent team Rotherham at this level and as long as it’s a good game we can cope with any result. Be nice if there was half a chance of the Bak being on the bench, he’s back in training but I suspect it’s too soon.

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Running on the grass - not sure the same as 'back in training'.

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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by officer_dibble » Fri Sep 17, 2021 10:05 am

Apologies doc 😃

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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by TonyDomingos » Fri Sep 17, 2021 12:53 pm

Over 18k tickets sold so far. It's going to be a ding-dong-do!
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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by BWFC_Insane » Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:14 pm

Sounds like John back in training for this weekend or start of next week but not likely to play Saturday. So Liam Gordon it is. And for me he'd have got the pick anyway.

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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by LeverEnd » Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:53 pm

BWFC_Insane wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:14 pm
Sounds like John back in training for this weekend or start of next week but not likely to play Saturday. So Liam Gordon it is. And for me he'd have got the pick anyway.
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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by LeverEnd » Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:54 pm

Joking apart, he's done well and improved massively. I'd still much prefer a fully fit Declan John though.
Every credit to Liam though.
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Re: You're not from New York City - Bolton v Rotherham (H) - 18-Sep-21

Post by BWFC_Insane » Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:58 pm

LeverEnd wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:53 pm
BWFC_Insane wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 2:14 pm
Sounds like John back in training for this weekend or start of next week but not likely to play Saturday. So Liam Gordon it is. And for me he'd have got the pick anyway.
You love him you do. You've got his poster on your wall.
I'd prefer John fully fit in the team. But right now this season we've seen a not fully fit John and a fully fit Gordon and for me Gordon has just edged it.

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