Oh to be in Bolton....At Home to Carlisle United , Sat 7th Sept. 3-o'clock.

[TANGODANCER]

now September's there, and Whoever wakes in Bolton finds it's raining everywhere.....Cumbria is home to the Lakeland Poets and we have no Shakespeares here, but the fans at the Unibol know a rhyme or two, although they migh not be in the Oxford Dictionary.

On paper we should have naught to fear from Calrisle who have only won one game so far. Easy meat? Well, we know better don't we? Unknown warriors hide everywhere in this league, so Mr Evatt needs to compose a winning rhyme or two. Will JonBod finally get to lead the charge or will it be no change. Sally forth good citizens and make your voices heard...

[boltonboris]

Carlisle have shifted almost 5000 tickets for this and they will be incredibly vociferous and will want to use the energy to get their noses in front.

We need to stamp our authority early doors.

[Worthy4England]

Yeah - We've had a couple of good results, the last two games, which were challenges we overcame, whilst short handed. A couple of different results, 5,000 Carlisle fans and some disaffected Wanderers probably wouldn't have presented a "match made in heaven." It's there to be won, so give it our best...

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Carlisle have shifted almost 5000 tickets for this and they will be incredibly vociferous and will want to use the energy to get their noses in front.

We need to stamp our authority early doors.

This.

One aspect of our somewhat schismatic team is that sometimes we come out absolutely on fire and boss it from the off. From Lincoln on opening day to Vale last weekend, it has been a recurring theme - but not an omnipresent one, as we saw on Tuesday and on other trickier days.

Clearly a strong start is always important but as Boris says, with that lot behind them having their best (non-Wembley) day out in years, Carlisle will be bang up for it. What might shush their din is an early Dion goal at their end, followed by a set-piece header and the home team asserting control of the game. It is with no disrespect to Carlisle, freshly up from the place below, that I say Bolton should expect to be the better team. Top-two aspirations, publicly expressed by club leaders, demand it.

I'll be intrigued to see how Owen Moxon does for them. He's in the final year of his contract and is quietly refusing to sign an extension, with manager Paul Simpson saying in August that they had offered him probably the best contract the club's ever given: "I keep badgering the life out of him, because we all want him to stay for as long as we possibly can. He’s in a position where he has a year left on his contract and he knows what could happen if he goes on a free transfer next season." They turned down a Blackpool bid in summer; his story is shaping up similarly to Dempsey's, and a January cash bid from us would not be a surprise and could suit all parties to a greater or lesser extent.

As for the oppo stats...
5th-bottom doesn't sound good, especially as two of the teams below them are points-deductees. They've only won 8pts from 11 games (W1 D5 L5), but it's been tighter than that sounds.

Two of the defeats were 0-1 - at Oxford and Vale, both up the top - and the three others were also 0-1 until the last 15 minutes, when their oppos (an early-flying Exeter, plus Derby and Wycombe) scored a second - presumably as Carlisle took more risks. At Wycombe they also played with 10 men for the last hour.

Their win was against Shrewsbury, who are also struggling this season, and that 2-0 result included a quarter of their league goals scored this season. Only Shrews, Fleetwood and Hapless Cheltenham have scored fewer.

Style-wise, Carlisle tend toward the long ball, like Tuesday's opponents: only Derby get it up the park faster than those two, while only Stevenage and (by 0.01) Shrewsbury average fewer passes per sequence.

Screenshot 2023-10-06 at 11.43.45.png (334.39 KiB) Viewed 20323 times

Stevenage's league position attests to them being somewhat better than Carlisle at the end of those sequences, but to be fair Carlisle have put together 24 moves of 10+ passes, while Stevenage are still in single figures, sticking doggedly to the Steve Evans script. Not that it's helped Carlisle's end product: they're rock-bottom for "build-up attacks" – defined as "open play sequences that contain 10 or more passes and either end in a shot or have at least one touch in the box" – with just 1 all season.

They're the division's fourth-hardest pressers; we're top, while Stevenage are 16th overall but Evans' mob top the table for high turnovers ("sequences that start in open play and begin 40m or less from the opponent's goal"), suggesting they choose their moments effectively to hassle the oppo back line, as we saw. Carlisle are third in that table, so our back three will have to act quickly on the ball. Again, though, it's not been effective for Carlisle in terms of end product: their 87 high turnovers have produced just 7 shots (joint 3rd-lowest) and zero goals. (So far...)

At attacking set pieces, they're statistically very similar to us - each side has had 35 attempts and 4 goals, though our xG has been higher. From open play, they're 2nd-bottom for goals (3) and 3rd-bottom for xG.

Defending set pieces, they've conceded a midtable 3 (we're on 2, which is credit to Bax as we've conceded the fifth-most efforts with the third-highest xG). Defending in open play they're also mid-table for concessions (8, like us) from the 4th-most efforts on goal.

[BWFC_Insane]

Max Conway just been recalled from Rochdale loan. Does this mean Randy is out injured tomorrow?

[brommers95]

Max Conway just been recalled from Rochdale loan. Does this mean Randy is out injured tomorrow?

Hmm possibly but not necessarily. He wasn’t getting much game time at Rochdale - just 127 minutes in the six weeks he was there, so maybe we’ve decided to send him somewhere else…

…at least I’m praying that’s the case. You’ve got me worried now insane

[sonicthewhite]

Max Conway just been recalled from Rochdale loan. Does this mean Randy is out injured tomorrow?

No mention of any potential injury to Randy in the Bolton News team line up availability. He's even spoken to the press in the pre-match section about looking forward to the game.

[The_Gun]

Yeah I mean an injury to Randy would be pretty devastating at this stage, but I'd suspect Brommers is on the money with his suggested reason for Conway coming back.


Baxter

Forrester Toal Iredale

Thomason Sheehan

JDC Morley Williams

JDB Charles


Dempsey I think needs a rest, and Morley can be effective playing further up the pitch, albeit he's clearly not the presser Kyle is. Evatt said the right thinks about Bodvarsson in his presser, and with Vic potentially not being fully fit, and the other two strikers being rubbish, I think tomorrow is the day to give him a start.

3-1 Bolton

[BWFC_Insane]

I think this will be the toughest game of the week. They have nowt to lose, a huge following and will be their cup final.

We are at the end of a long week with a small available squad.

We have to be considerably better than Tuesday I feel. Can’t be slacking off against these. I’d say his is closest to Wigan game in terms of how it feels.

[The_Gun]

How confident are you that we're going to lose?

[dave the minion]

How confident are you that we're going to lose?

100% I reckon, just like Tuesday....

[Mar]

Maybe Conway was recruited on the back of a space being made on the bench. It wouldn't surprise me if Coleman or Jerome ended up missing out in favour of having a back up winger.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

How confident are you that we're going to lose?

100% I reckon, just like Tuesday....

Thought Vale was the one he’d never been more certain we’d lose?

[dave the minion]

Possibly/Probably. Likely all the other 8 games we've played as well.......

[officer_dibble]

Be surprised if Dempsey doesn’t start as captain against his nearest league club to that shithole he is from.

[Worthy4England]

We really should be winning this one (or at worst not losing it - they've had a couple of creditable draws)...but they haven't had an overabundance of goal scoring and a pretty leaky defence...as I was looking at the table, I spotted Cheltenham haven't managed a league goal yet. In 11 games....tough gig.

[BWFC_Insane]

We really should be winning this one (or at worst not losing it - they've had a couple of creditable draws)...but they haven't had an overabundance of goal scoring and a pretty leaky defence...as I was looking at the table, I spotted Cheltenham haven't managed a league goal yet. In 11 games....tough gig.

Hmm. We could help them there and give them Nlundulu back in January.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

as I was looking at the table, I spotted Cheltenham haven't managed a league goal yet. In 11 games....tough gig.

They're now into the 'record-breaking' phase.

[Worthy4England]

as I was looking at the table, I spotted Cheltenham haven't managed a league goal yet. In 11 games....tough gig.

They're now into the 'record-breaking' phase.

Just did a bit more reading....their goal in the EFL, was an OG by the oppo, and to add insult, they're onto 3 OGs they've managed at their own end...

Anyhow. 2-1 Wanderers, today. So shall it be.

[officer_dibble]

Third win this week hopefully. Sets us up for a better October / early Nov than last season then!