High Noon Cover up. V Rotherham away Sat 11th Jan 12-30.

[TANGODANCER]

He's currently the manager, so as Bolton fans it might be worth discussing what might be done with him as manager, rather than purely discussing fictional worlds in which he isn't.

If your position is that YOU don't want to talk about actual football until he's gone, that's cool. Don't.

Might be worth giving Randall a free role, sort of poor man's De Bruyne or Luca Modric. What's to lose?

[BWFC_Insane]

You don’t get out of league one with luxury midfield players. We need at most one of Sheehan and Randall - whichever can play number 10 and actually put their laces through the ball and score goals and do some hard running off a target man then two physical runners doing the actual midfield roles. Right now that’s Matete and a new signing.

But the only way any progress can be made is Evatt going. Scraping the play offs and losing - would be dreadful. The only way anything good happens is if he goes at this stage and we start to build with new ideas and momentum.

He's currently the manager, so as Bolton fans it might be worth discussing what might be done with him as manager, rather than purely discussing fictional worlds in which he isn't.

If your position is that YOU don't want to talk about actual football until he's gone, that's cool. Don't.

No. It’s that now it’s established that all the Evatt nonsense and tactics discussed as nauseum have been exposed as being utter tosh and the reason we are still a lower league club….its probably about time that we didn’t pretend that wasn’t the case. Everything Evatt has suggested and done is wrong. Sheehan at 6 is precisely why we are failing not his absence. We need a proper physically combative midfield. Every bloody side who gets out this league has one.

The rules of football haven’t changed and the things that will get you out of this league are the same. We need physicality a solid defence and a striker who can make it stick and offer a target in the box. Some pace out wide and someone who can deliver it into the box.

The rest is just arranging deckchairs on the titanic hoping that although you can see its sinking that the sea isn’t too cold at this time of year.

[irie Cee Bee]

The Board has screwed up by giving Evatt more money to spend. The problem many business owners face when things get red, is that they try to spend more to get out of it, and so they make matters worse for themselves. Sharon should have shown Evatt the door in December, having failed to do so in the Summer. Now she is digging in, endorsing him and allowing him to spend more and more money in support of his failed system. A big mistake.

This is only going to end one way, and we all know what that is. We are just kicking the can further down the road. I continue to watch and support my team with less emotion while waiting for the inevitable to happen.

[Bertie Wooster]

The board has fecked up believing all of the Evatt shite that he spouts about recruiting for 1 specific system i.e. putting all of your eggs in one basket. Ms Brittan should have got rid after the Wembley debacle, but she bottled the decision and is now in a pickle

There is so little football knowledge on the board that Evatt can convince them to keep giving him £millions to waste on tippy tappy sideways & backwards slow as feck predictable football with a team of show ponies because he knows best, when he clearly doesn't - he's a one trick pony and that trick stopped working 12 months ago and there is absolutely nothing he can do to change things and he knows it.

We don't have a team that can physicality complete in league 1 and the BWFC fans and the opposition can see it, the Rotherham fans said that we are the worst side they have played and couldn't believe how shite we where, the Bolton fans have seen this week after week for months and have had enough.

[Prufrock]

He's given an "I am not owned!" interview to Iles...

“I am not deluded. And delusion is rife in football.

“I am not delusional and the minute I don’t think I can get any more out of these players then I will have that conversation with the board. They know that and I know that."

It's all gearing up to a wasted second half of the season, and a loveless 'leaves by mutual consent' in the summer, before Evatt slowly shrinks and transforms into a corn cob.

[Worthy4England]

He mentions quite a lot it's not just him. I'm inclined to agree. Some muddled groupthink going on.

From signing little players who can't stay upright for a month at a time, then grumbling we have injuries, like all teams get.

Not addressing defensive problems coz we only have "attacker" beer goggles.

Relying on last season's results, (where we failed to go up) as a yardstick, where we fluffed our lines on automatics, tried to blow it v Barnsley at home, scraped through and then showed our tactical ineptitude because they managed to nullify mainly one ball from Santos to Sheehan.

Saturday was a complete shambles.

[Bertie Wooster]

The club is a shambles on and off the pitch, no leaders or decision makers on or off the pitch....a club just going through the motions, cans being kicked further down the road.

Evatt himself deciding when to leave or not, you couldn't make it up if you tried. It makes Mike Bassett look professional.

[officer_dibble]

The opposite i guess is these clubs that change their managers every few months, Watford etc. I’m glad we are professional and give someone time but this is farcical now. We’re turning in the same spineless performance every few weeks and the manager has openly admitted he hasn’t got an answer. The board must have pretty deep pockets to be in a position where we can write off this season and piss the customers off so badly they don’t come to matches or want to buy season tickets again. It is a farce.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

The opposite i guess is these clubs that change their managers every few months, Watford etc. I’m glad we are professional and give someone time but this is farcical now. We’re turning in the same spineless performance every few weeks and the manager has openly admitted he hasn’t got an answer. The board must have pretty deep pockets to be in a position where we can write off this season and piss the customers off so badly they don’t come to matches or want to buy season tickets again. It is a farce.

I've said without relish that IMO the only thing that might force Sharon to sack Evatt before summer is if the home atmosphere turns toxic. The indicators from Rotherham were not optimistic on that front.

Saturday vs Cambridge and Tuesday vs Charlton could be horribly interesting. Garry Monk and Nathan Jones are both easily savvy enough to know that if they let us have the ball deep but snap into tackles in their own half, they've only got to make it to the half-hour mark before our players run out of steam and our fans run out of sympathy.

[Bertie Wooster]

Saturday vs Cambridge and Tuesday vs Charlton could be horribly interesting. Garry Monk and Nathan Jones are both easily savvy enough to know that if they let us have the ball deep but snap into tackles in their own half, they've only got to make it to the half-hour mark before our players run out of steam and our fans run out of sympathy.

Your being generous there DSB for the last 12 months the team has only ever played well for 15-20 mins per game at best, whether that is at the start or the finish of games.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Saturday vs Cambridge and Tuesday vs Charlton could be horribly interesting. Garry Monk and Nathan Jones are both easily savvy enough to know that if they let us have the ball deep but snap into tackles in their own half, they've only got to make it to the half-hour mark before our players run out of steam and our fans run out of sympathy.

Your being generous there DSB for the last 12 months the team has only ever played well for 15-20 mins per game at best, whether that is at the start or the finish of games.

Tomayto, tomahto. Point is we're hugely inconsistent and incredibly easy to plan against.

[GhostoftheBok]

Tomayto, tomahto. Point is we're hugely inconsistent and incredibly easy to plan against.

This is one of the glaring issues with the Evatt interview published today.

If he had the full, vocal backing of the fans then maybe there'd be a pathway back for the football team. So he can look and say "Piece A goes here and Piece B goes here and we will win games again", but it's very different when thousands of people want you gone.

It's entirely possible that a new manager could come in and do broadly the same tactical stuff as Ian and do well, with the players lifted and crowd backing them.

Ian's like a channel swimmer trying to go against the current and obviously failing to dodge the turds.

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

Some might say he is the turd

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

It's entirely possible that a new manager could come in and do broadly the same tactical stuff as Ian and do well, with the players lifted and crowd backing them.

I'm absolutely fascinated by the alternate universes in which we sack Evatt and hire a Schumacher or whoever. I suspect we would indeed immediately get a bounce - contrary to popular belief, this doesn't always happen but I think we would for three reasons.

One, lancing the boil would end a lot of toxicity.
Two, players would have to prove themselves to a new manager.
Three, this squad is underachieving.

Of course we will never ever know, not least because he won't get fired, but even if he did we then lose the alternate reality in which he stayed and cleaned up his poop. What we can't say for certain is that things WOULD happen, but with each loss I feel less confident that Ian is still the best man for this job. #sunkcostfallacy

[BWFC_Insane]

It's entirely possible that a new manager could come in and do broadly the same tactical stuff as Ian and do well, with the players lifted and crowd backing them.

I'm absolutely fascinated by the alternate universes in which we sack Evatt and hire a Schumacher or whoever. I suspect we would indeed immediately get a bounce - contrary to popular belief, this doesn't always happen but I think we would for three reasons.

One, lancing the boil would end a lot of toxicity.
Two, players would have to prove themselves to a new manager.
Three, this squad is underachieving.

Of course we will never ever know, not least because he won't get fired, but even if he did we then lose the alternate reality in which he stayed and cleaned up his poop. What we can't say for certain is that things WOULD happen, but with each loss I feel less confident that Ian is still the best man for this job. #sunkcostfallacy

I think a bounce is likely it’s a question of how long it would last.

I suspect fresh voice and new ideas would take us for a fair way given that we do have some good players at least technically and let’s be honest the organisation right now is non existent. A manager who got some structures into the team and simplified the games a bit I think would do well. At least initially. How long that lasts I think is questionable as I come back to character and other things that for me are sorely lacking in the group.

[Harry Genshaw]

Agree with that Insane. I do think we have some good players for L1 who would do a much better job elsewhere or preferably here under a new manager.

I was a little jealous seeing Carlisle fans opinions on their lad Mellis going to Wigan. The gist of which was ' he's limited technically but he'll run through a wall for you, rebuild it and run through it again". Just the kind of new signing I'd love but instead we've gone for the polar opposite.

[The_Gun]

Tomayto, tomahto. Point is we're hugely inconsistent and incredibly easy to plan against.

This is one of the glaring issues with the Evatt interview published today.

If he had the full, vocal backing of the fans then maybe there'd be a pathway back for the football team. So he can look and say "Piece A goes here and Piece B goes here and we will win games again", but it's very different when thousands of people want you gone.

It's entirely possible that a new manager could come in and do broadly the same tactical stuff as Ian and do well, with the players lifted and crowd backing them.

Ian's like a channel swimmer trying to go against the current and obviously failing to dodge the turds.

Interested to get your thoughts on what it might take for Evatt to be sacked before the end of the season, Ghost.

Do you think it would be being threatened by relegation, or perhaps the playoffs becoming out of reach?

[Worthy4England]

This was Chris Markham's take from around 12 months back...

Markham.jpg (90.37 KiB) Viewed 1369 times

Maybe game 11 will do it.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

This was Chris Markham's take from around 12 months back...
Maybe game 11 will do it.

Thing with that is that for all her business experience (undoubted and welcome) I doubt she's ever had such a... public-facing role.

I doubt that if things were going sub-optimally at The Can-D Food Co she got tens of thousands of people screaming "your processing and preserving of fish, crustaceans and molluscs is SHITE"

[Worthy4England]

This was Chris Markham's take from around 12 months back...
Maybe game 11 will do it.

Thing with that is that for all her business experience (undoubted and welcome) I doubt she's ever had such a... public-facing role.

I doubt that if things were going sub-optimally at The Can-D Food Co she got tens of thousands of people screaming "your processing and preserving of fish, crustaceans and molluscs is SHITE"

Yeah, mate, that's true, for sure. But I think it probably shows she's more "stick than twist" and it might take something rather more monumental than a below average run of form, to move the dial on what is likely to be her way of working.

That's just a focussed in snippet, but the full script was all about doing things differently than the footballing "norm."