Who opened the door? My money is on Janus! 2024 January transfer thread.

[BWFC_Insane]

The problem is that I and many others have seen this all before. Bolton struggling in the lower leagues. It’s not where we should be but we ended up there through shocking management of the club both times.

But I think for some there is this idea that we are now at our level. I don’t see it that way.

We shouldn’t be in league one. Yes we hit rock bottom and escaped league two and have absolutely made good strides. But we shouldn’t be spending season after season down here and I don’t see scraping results in league one as some massive victorious thing we can enjoy.

We need to get out of here and play at a level more becoming of Bolton wanderers. Premiership football under Allardyce was so good because we enjoyed something completely novel in Boltons modern history and that was competing in the top flight year after year not just staying there but pushing right into the upper echelons of that league. We upset the odds to do so.

I don’t think promotion from league one is the same.

We are going to Carlisle and could in theory (though clearly it won’t happen) lose to them twice in a season. That’s more a low point in our history than anything else.

A lot of fans have said the same. They have had enough of this league and want to be watching the bigger games that come in the league above.

That doesn’t mean we have any right or automatic determination to go up. You have to earn it.

But I think the fundamental difference is either you enjoy this or you are of the view that scraping around in the lower leagues is simply a means to an end.

I see it as the latter. League one is not a great league. It’s tough for sure. But I think our fans in the third season here expecting that we won’t be in it next season is more than reasonable.

[Prufrock]

We're at the point where we've made great progress over 3.5 years where we've put ourselves in a position where we absolutely should be competing to go up, and we are. No-one has a divine right, very few teams ever sail through a whole season and won the league by 10 points.

Promotion is hard, I think it's far too simplistic, unless you have a budget that dwarves everyone else, to say promotion is the dividing line between success or failure. Luck plays a massive part, and there are lots of factors and unknowns.

And I don't buy this means to an end nonsense. No-one is happy with trundling along here forever, you want to see progress made, and you want to go up. But each season counts the same. I enjoyed Wembley last year right up there with say Atletico at home. There's no divine right, and glory is relative.

[BWFC_Insane]

We're at the point where we've made great progress over 3.5 years where we've put ourselves in a position where we absolutely should be competing to go up, and we are. No-one has a divine right, very few teams ever sail through a whole season and won the league by 10 points.

Promotion is hard, I think it's far too simplistic, unless you have a budget that dwarves everyone else, to say promotion is the dividing line between success or failure. Luck plays a massive part, and there are lots of factors and unknowns.

And I don't buy this means to an end nonsense. No-one is happy with trundling along here forever, you want to see progress made, and you want to go up. But each season counts the same. I enjoyed Wembley last year right up there with say Atletico at home. There's no divine right, and glory is relative.

It’s hard to articulate on here because without writing even more of an essay it sort of ends up shortening what I mean into points that don’t really cut it.

I’ve watched us a long time and I don’t really believe that we’ve ever had a situation where we’ve failed a few times and it’s just a bit of ‘luck’ we miss that we will get eventually. I don’t think it works that way.

There is something tangible and inherent about the ability to get over the line. Our premiership promotion year is a good example. Allardyce the season before came in and took over a bottom half championship side got the team into three semi finals including the play offs and lost all three. The next season even though he lost Fish, Jensen, Gudjohnsen and a handful of others we begged and borrowed and challenged most of the season for the automatics narrowly missed out and went up through the playoffs. Nobody expected promotion at the start because simply we’d lost our best players and spent about £500K in fees on received fees of many millions. The reason we did go up was we had the best manager in the league by an absolute country mile. Though clearly we didn’t know it.

But again in hindsight we know that behind the scenes had we not gone up that season it may well have been curtains such was the financial mess we were in.

Derby are the alternative case in point. Years in the championship. Close. Really close. Surely they will get the luck? Then…apocalypse after they never did.

It’s not in my view a good idea to just ‘wait for the season you get the luck’ it doesn’t end well. It’s cliche but you make your own luck in this game.

Yes promotion is a horrible slog. A hard and nightmarish thing to achieve. Nobody has a right. But I’ve seen enough to know that clubs tend to make it happen and if not tend to end up in trouble.

[Worthy4England]

Often the ones that are in trouble when it doesn't occur, is down to the fact they saw "problem," threw unsustainable money at it (bit like us in 2011) and then found out it hadn't resolved the problem, so the problem became the problem + debt. As I understand it our response so far has been "what we're doing is sustainable" whichever outcome, promotion or not, occurs. Everyone's saying we're living within our means.

Is your suggestion we should ignore "our means" bearing in mind we've done that before and it clearly didn't end well, because that's how you "create luck" or is it a different type of suggestion "such as replace Evatt with X," because X has done it before many times? Not quite sure what you're proposing to alter our "luck?"

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Promotion isn’t a horrible slog. Winning say three-quarters of your games isn’t a horrible slog.

Fighting relegation is a horrible slog. Not winning for a month, or two, is a horrible slog. Waiting for the fans to turn is a horrible slog. Fearing financial repercussions of failure is a horrible slog.

Seasons like this are the ones I remember and enjoy. I’ve spoken before of watching us in Parky’s first term and my utter confidence if we scored first that we’d not concede, and we’d therefore win. But the two seasons after that… yeuch. All very nice to play big teams, until you’re watching tens of thousands around you in the ground celebrate and laugh at you.

Which is not to say I don’t want to go up. I really do. But I intend to enjoy the ride and I really hope you (BWFCi and everyone) can too. If not now, then when?

[GhostoftheBok]

I don't have a problem with people being angry with a shit display and calling it out on a message board/Twatter or whatever...

Neither do I.

[BWFC_Insane]

Promotion isn’t a horrible slog. Winning say three-quarters of your games isn’t a horrible slog.

Fighting relegation is a horrible slog. Not winning for a month, or two, is a horrible slog. Waiting for the fans to turn is a horrible slog. Fearing financial repercussions of failure is a horrible slog.

Seasons like this are the ones I remember and enjoy. I’ve spoken before of watching us in Parky’s first term and my utter confidence if we scored first that we’d not concede, and we’d therefore win. But the two seasons after that… yeuch. All very nice to play big teams, until you’re watching tens of thousands around you in the ground celebrate and laugh at you.

Which is not to say I don’t want to go up. I really do. But I intend to enjoy the ride and I really hope you (BWFCi and everyone) can too. If not now, then when?

Watching us survive in the prem that first season or two was imho way way way better than watching us down here even when we win each week. It’s a horrible slog because even a good side comes down to consistency week in week out rather than how good they are in any one game.

It’s just a need to slog result after result out. It’s horrible imho.

I don’t enjoy watching us in the lower leagues that much tbh - it’s just for me a means to something better. And I think suggesting people enjoyed Neal’s seasons where we fell short would also be re writing history.

The white hot era we enjoyed for the cup runs more than the league but again it does tend to rest on the end result more than the journey. We remember moments like Hull away but not so much the slog. At least imho.

[dave the minion]

I don't have a problem with people being angry with a shit display and calling it out on a message board/Twatter or whatever...

Neither do I.

Nor do I. However, I do have an issue with people in the stadium spending 85 minutes of every game vociferously complaining about everything and stating - as absolute fact - that the team and manager, despite being on track to be top of the league etc, don't know what they are doing.
Opinions are fine, but please don't spoil it for everyone else.........

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Watching us survive in the prem that first season or two was imho way way way better than watching us down here even when we win each week. It’s a horrible slog because even a good side comes down to consistency week in week out rather than how good they are in any one game.

It’s just a need to slog result after result out. It’s horrible imho.

I don’t enjoy watching us in the lower leagues that much tbh - it’s just for me a means to something better. And I think suggesting people enjoyed Neal’s seasons where we fell short would also be re writing history.

The white hot era we enjoyed for the cup runs more than the league but again it does tend to rest on the end result more than the journey. We remember moments like Hull away but not so much the slog. At least imho.

Allardyce survival seasons had some unforgettable peaks - Okocha’s goal v West Ham, Fredi Bobic dismantling Ipswich, Percy Frandsen v Boro, etc. But also horrible barren winless runs.

Selective recollection will bring back happy memories. But being a fan isn’t just about matchdays, and I spent most of those seasons worried. Promotion-seeking seasons I tend to spend in hope.

Maybe it’s a personality thing. I assume if we regain top-flight status you’ll become a beacon of positivity even if we’re losing

[Prufrock]

We're at the point where we've made great progress over 3.5 years where we've put ourselves in a position where we absolutely should be competing to go up, and we are. No-one has a divine right, very few teams ever sail through a whole season and won the league by 10 points.

Promotion is hard, I think it's far too simplistic, unless you have a budget that dwarves everyone else, to say promotion is the dividing line between success or failure. Luck plays a massive part, and there are lots of factors and unknowns.

And I don't buy this means to an end nonsense. No-one is happy with trundling along here forever, you want to see progress made, and you want to go up. But each season counts the same. I enjoyed Wembley last year right up there with say Atletico at home. There's no divine right, and glory is relative.

It’s hard to articulate on here because without writing even more of an essay it sort of ends up shortening what I mean into points that don’t really cut it.

I’ve watched us a long time and I don’t really believe that we’ve ever had a situation where we’ve failed a few times and it’s just a bit of ‘luck’ we miss that we will get eventually. I don’t think it works that way.

There is something tangible and inherent about the ability to get over the line. Our premiership promotion year is a good example. Allardyce the season before came in and took over a bottom half championship side got the team into three semi finals including the play offs and lost all three. The next season even though he lost Fish, Jensen, Gudjohnsen and a handful of others we begged and borrowed and challenged most of the season for the automatics narrowly missed out and went up through the playoffs. Nobody expected promotion at the start because simply we’d lost our best players and spent about £500K in fees on received fees of many millions. The reason we did go up was we had the best manager in the league by an absolute country mile. Though clearly we didn’t know it.

But again in hindsight we know that behind the scenes had we not gone up that season it may well have been curtains such was the financial mess we were in.

Derby are the alternative case in point. Years in the championship. Close. Really close. Surely they will get the luck? Then…apocalypse after they never did.

It’s not in my view a good idea to just ‘wait for the season you get the luck’ it doesn’t end well. It’s cliche but you make your own luck in this game.

Yes promotion is a horrible slog. A hard and nightmarish thing to achieve. Nobody has a right. But I’ve seen enough to know that clubs tend to make it happen and if not tend to end up in trouble.

See I just fundamentally disagree with this. Maybe "chance" is a better word than luck. This substack I think is excellent and sets out what I mean:

https://bristoliver.substack.com/p/the- ... everything

You could replay the Allardyce promotion season a thousand times and there are loads where we don't go up. An injury here, a poor decision there. There's no inherent, ethereal quality that gets you over. Sure things like determination and maximising limited resources are great qualities that improve your chances. I doubt pretty much any other manager would have given us the same chance of going up that season, but it's still only a chance.

When you look at us now, there's been clear progress year on year, we're now at a point where we have a very good chance to go up and it's absolutely fair to look at individual decisions and consider if we're improving those chances. But there are no guarantees and that's all you can ever do. The current custodians are of course not perfect, they'll get some things wrong and get away with it, and do other things right but be hamstrung by luck. On a holistic view though I'm very much in the "excellent job lads, crack on" camp.

[Worthy4England]

I'm with Insano on some of that. If we went P46, W46, it would actually be pretty boring.

The rewards seem smaller, where there's little risk. Our journey from L2 felt a lot more exciting, probably because it was a lot less perfect, we weren't blowing teams away so there was a genuine risk/reward level of excitement across a lot of that run-in. I can still recall games like Mansfield where we were 2 down with 20 minutes to play and we turned it round, it felt like every game was on a knife edge, with the likely outcome often fairly level. Whereas I barely remember who scored when we gubbed Cheltenham away this year - I'd have to look the score up - but I know the process looked after it

[GhostoftheBok]

Maybe it’s a personality thing. I assume if we regain top-flight status you’ll become a beacon of positivity even if we’re losing

Spat out my coffee...

[Worthy4England]

I don't have a problem with people being angry with a shit display and calling it out on a message board/Twatter or whatever...

Neither do I.

Nor do I. However, I do have an issue with people in the stadium spending 85 minutes of every game vociferously complaining about everything and stating - as absolute fact - that the team and manager, despite being on track to be top of the league etc, don't know what they are doing.
Opinions are fine, but please don't spoil it for everyone else.........

I'm not sure how we could help you there. I doubt most of the stadium are doing that. I can't recall the last time anyone near me called out the team / manager as anything more than the sort of thing you'd maybe expect "fck me Eoin's been a fcking donkey there" "why didn't Dion pull the trigger first time, useless fcker" and "what's the clueless bugger doing bringing X on" - but those sort of comments seem fairly innocuous. You're conjuring up in my minds eye that you're surrounded by people singing "Evatt out" every time we concede.

[Worthy4England]

We need a signing to divert attention from people who prefer to watch their football from one aspect vs another.

[GhostoftheBok]

We need a signing to divert attention from people who prefer to watch their football from one aspect vs another.

Ideally more than one.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

I'm with Insano on some of that. If we went P46, W46, it would actually be pretty boring.

I could cope. The 98pt 100-goal season was probably my favourite ever, although not entirely for footballing reasons.

[BWFC_Insane]

Watching us survive in the prem that first season or two was imho way way way better than watching us down here even when we win each week. It’s a horrible slog because even a good side comes down to consistency week in week out rather than how good they are in any one game.

It’s just a need to slog result after result out. It’s horrible imho.

I don’t enjoy watching us in the lower leagues that much tbh - it’s just for me a means to something better. And I think suggesting people enjoyed Neal’s seasons where we fell short would also be re writing history.

The white hot era we enjoyed for the cup runs more than the league but again it does tend to rest on the end result more than the journey. We remember moments like Hull away but not so much the slog. At least imho.

Allardyce survival seasons had some unforgettable peaks - Okocha’s goal v West Ham, Fredi Bobic dismantling Ipswich, Percy Frandsen v Boro, etc. But also horrible barren winless runs.

Selective recollection will bring back happy memories. But being a fan isn’t just about matchdays, and I spent most of those seasons worried. Promotion-seeking seasons I tend to spend in hope.

Maybe it’s a personality thing. I assume if we regain top-flight status you’ll become a beacon of positivity even if we’re losing

Given the contingent screaming for say Megson to go was large on here and I was not in it then perhaps you assume right!

When a football club is maximising itself I will be happy. League one is not it - especially not with the situation we are in now.

I doubt it’s the premiership either right now. It’s probably middle of championship. This season is almost certainly our best chance to get there in the next few years and the thought of a summer rebuild as we lose some player a to then spend another year ‘establishing ourselves’ in league one again for another year is not in any way enticing.

[BWFC_Insane]

We're at the point where we've made great progress over 3.5 years where we've put ourselves in a position where we absolutely should be competing to go up, and we are. No-one has a divine right, very few teams ever sail through a whole season and won the league by 10 points.

Promotion is hard, I think it's far too simplistic, unless you have a budget that dwarves everyone else, to say promotion is the dividing line between success or failure. Luck plays a massive part, and there are lots of factors and unknowns.

And I don't buy this means to an end nonsense. No-one is happy with trundling along here forever, you want to see progress made, and you want to go up. But each season counts the same. I enjoyed Wembley last year right up there with say Atletico at home. There's no divine right, and glory is relative.

It’s hard to articulate on here because without writing even more of an essay it sort of ends up shortening what I mean into points that don’t really cut it.

I’ve watched us a long time and I don’t really believe that we’ve ever had a situation where we’ve failed a few times and it’s just a bit of ‘luck’ we miss that we will get eventually. I don’t think it works that way.

There is something tangible and inherent about the ability to get over the line. Our premiership promotion year is a good example. Allardyce the season before came in and took over a bottom half championship side got the team into three semi finals including the play offs and lost all three. The next season even though he lost Fish, Jensen, Gudjohnsen and a handful of others we begged and borrowed and challenged most of the season for the automatics narrowly missed out and went up through the playoffs. Nobody expected promotion at the start because simply we’d lost our best players and spent about £500K in fees on received fees of many millions. The reason we did go up was we had the best manager in the league by an absolute country mile. Though clearly we didn’t know it.

But again in hindsight we know that behind the scenes had we not gone up that season it may well have been curtains such was the financial mess we were in.

Derby are the alternative case in point. Years in the championship. Close. Really close. Surely they will get the luck? Then…apocalypse after they never did.

It’s not in my view a good idea to just ‘wait for the season you get the luck’ it doesn’t end well. It’s cliche but you make your own luck in this game.

Yes promotion is a horrible slog. A hard and nightmarish thing to achieve. Nobody has a right. But I’ve seen enough to know that clubs tend to make it happen and if not tend to end up in trouble.

See I just fundamentally disagree with this. Maybe "chance" is a better word than luck. This substack I think is excellent and sets out what I mean:

https://bristoliver.substack.com/p/the- ... everything

You could replay the Allardyce promotion season a thousand times and there are loads where we don't go up. An injury here, a poor decision there. There's no inherent, ethereal quality that gets you over. Sure things like determination and maximising limited resources are great qualities that improve your chances. I doubt pretty much any other manager would have given us the same chance of going up that season, but it's still only a chance.

When you look at us now, there's been clear progress year on year, we're now at a point where we have a very good chance to go up and it's absolutely fair to look at individual decisions and consider if we're improving those chances. But there are no guarantees and that's all you can ever do. The current custodians are of course not perfect, they'll get some things wrong and get away with it, and do other things right but be hamstrung by luck. On a holistic view though I'm very much in the "excellent job lads, crack on" camp.

If you look at the best managers in their eras they don’t tend to have long strings of ‘near misses’ they tend to get ‘over the line’ more often than not. Clearly not every time - but that isn’t chance. It’s not luck. It’s something that can be delivered - again not every time. But is a measure and a tangible thing.

[GhostoftheBok]

When you look at us now, there's been clear progress year on year

"You have to earn it", but the actual process of earning it is beneath us...

[Prufrock]

We're at the point where we've made great progress over 3.5 years where we've put ourselves in a position where we absolutely should be competing to go up, and we are. No-one has a divine right, very few teams ever sail through a whole season and won the league by 10 points.

Promotion is hard, I think it's far too simplistic, unless you have a budget that dwarves everyone else, to say promotion is the dividing line between success or failure. Luck plays a massive part, and there are lots of factors and unknowns.

And I don't buy this means to an end nonsense. No-one is happy with trundling along here forever, you want to see progress made, and you want to go up. But each season counts the same. I enjoyed Wembley last year right up there with say Atletico at home. There's no divine right, and glory is relative.

It’s hard to articulate on here because without writing even more of an essay it sort of ends up shortening what I mean into points that don’t really cut it.

I’ve watched us a long time and I don’t really believe that we’ve ever had a situation where we’ve failed a few times and it’s just a bit of ‘luck’ we miss that we will get eventually. I don’t think it works that way.

There is something tangible and inherent about the ability to get over the line. Our premiership promotion year is a good example. Allardyce the season before came in and took over a bottom half championship side got the team into three semi finals including the play offs and lost all three. The next season even though he lost Fish, Jensen, Gudjohnsen and a handful of others we begged and borrowed and challenged most of the season for the automatics narrowly missed out and went up through the playoffs. Nobody expected promotion at the start because simply we’d lost our best players and spent about £500K in fees on received fees of many millions. The reason we did go up was we had the best manager in the league by an absolute country mile. Though clearly we didn’t know it.

But again in hindsight we know that behind the scenes had we not gone up that season it may well have been curtains such was the financial mess we were in.

Derby are the alternative case in point. Years in the championship. Close. Really close. Surely they will get the luck? Then…apocalypse after they never did.

It’s not in my view a good idea to just ‘wait for the season you get the luck’ it doesn’t end well. It’s cliche but you make your own luck in this game.

Yes promotion is a horrible slog. A hard and nightmarish thing to achieve. Nobody has a right. But I’ve seen enough to know that clubs tend to make it happen and if not tend to end up in trouble.

See I just fundamentally disagree with this. Maybe "chance" is a better word than luck. This substack I think is excellent and sets out what I mean:

https://bristoliver.substack.com/p/the- ... everything

You could replay the Allardyce promotion season a thousand times and there are loads where we don't go up. An injury here, a poor decision there. There's no inherent, ethereal quality that gets you over. Sure things like determination and maximising limited resources are great qualities that improve your chances. I doubt pretty much any other manager would have given us the same chance of going up that season, but it's still only a chance.

When you look at us now, there's been clear progress year on year, we're now at a point where we have a very good chance to go up and it's absolutely fair to look at individual decisions and consider if we're improving those chances. But there are no guarantees and that's all you can ever do. The current custodians are of course not perfect, they'll get some things wrong and get away with it, and do other things right but be hamstrung by luck. On a holistic view though I'm very much in the "excellent job lads, crack on" camp.

If you look at the best managers in their eras they don’t tend to have long strings of ‘near misses’ they tend to get ‘over the line’ more often than not. Clearly not every time - but that isn’t chance. It’s not luck. It’s something that can be delivered - again not every time. But is a measure and a tangible thing.

I mean of course results are important, and to the extent it needs saying, of course being good at things and doing good work improves your chances in any one off. But it's obviously subject to much more, and it's just not sustainable to then draw a line that says promotion equals success and not going up is failure in any wider meaningful sense beyond "that's what we wanted to happen and it didn't".

I hate to bring it up, but the most dominant manager of the recent era, down the road didn't win the league more times than he won it. Even discounting the late 80s- from 93 onwards he still only won it 65% of the time.

By that reasoning you'd look at United in 00-01 and say success (inherent will to win and overcome), 01-02 failure (it's gone?), 02-03 success (it's back), 03-04 failure (gone again!).

I think it's fair to say that, barring unforeseen arse falling out of everything, if we don't go up in the next couple of years that's probably a failure. But this is the first year we can realistically say we should be right up there, and there's about 6 teams could say that before the start for 3 places.