• Joey O’Brien plans hard summer
• Gary Megson: Reebok key to Bolton Wanderers’ chances
• Sam hits back at Lee in row
• Was Nolan wrong to leave Bolton Wanderers?
• Megson – Bolton still in the mix
• The Best Eleven: Premiership Players Born 10 Miles or Less from Their Current Club’s Stadium (featuring Nicky Hunt)
• Megson demands final push
• Bolton No Longer Interested In Bodde
• Is the Old Firm Premier League move sunk?
• Phil Gartside, The Old Firm & The Premier League
• Prem: Makukula to return to Benfica
• Phil Gartside Scores the Own Goal, Again
• Bolton Wanderers Push For Two Tier Premiership
• Megson warns against complacency
• Liverpool Reserves 3 Bolton Wanderers Reserves 4
• Bolton Wanderers wary of relegation threat
• Arsenal And Chelsea Chase Joao Moutinho & Miguel Veloso
• Bolton display worries Megson

Have your say on Bolton Wanderers in the comment box below…

Here’s what the various Bolton Wanderers message boards made of the 4-1 thrashing of Middlesbrough on Saturday…

Positives
- “It was a great result and the relegation pressure should now be off for the rest of the season.”

- “Danny Shittu was probably our best player… he deserves to keep his place in the team.”

- “Gavin McCann had a good game and made loads of tackles. He made up for Fabrice Muamba’s lacklustre display” … “Muamba should be replaced by Chris Basham for a while.”

- “Ricardo Gardner was outstanding too” … “Gary Megson should take some credit for Gardner’s resurgence.”

- “The anti-Megson brigade has gone very quiet” … “Someone should make a Megson In banner.”

- “The matchday programme was an interesting read. It’s got much better since it no longer contains Kevin Nolan’s pre-match thoughts.”

Negatives
- “We were only good in patches and could have had problems if Middlesbrough weren’t completely useless.”

- “We created enough chances to win the game in the first half but then let them back in to it… and their defence was truly awful” … “On another day Middlesbrough could easily have won it.”

- “Johan Elmander had another poor game, he still doesn’t look like he’s fully fit yet” … “Ebi Smolarek should’ve played after he scored four goals for Poland” … OR “People should get off Elmander’s back, he’ll come good soon.”

- “When we were 3-1 up why didn’t Megson make use of his subs to rest players?”

Disagree? Have your say in the comment box below…

Sources: BBC 606, The Bolton News, The Wanderer, Rivals, Burnden Aces, Bolton Banter, Bolton Wanderers Mad

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It wasn’t exactly a classic. In fact it’s a game that will be remembered as the beginning of the end of Kevin Nolan’s love affair with Bolton Wanderers – when he had a spat with a fan after the final whistle – rather than for anything that happened on the pitch.

Here are the, ahem, highlights from that game…

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Your guide to all the Bolton v Newcastle previews and Mystic Meggery

Reasons to be cheerful…
1. Kevin Nolan will miss the game for his new club after he tried to maim Victor Anichebe last week. Joey Barton and Danny Guthrie will also be keeping their studs clean.

2. Newcastle fans may not be able to find the Reebok Stadium because of some typically piss poor transport planning. Unless, of course, Nolan has told them all his secrets.

3. Gary Megson wants to pick the same team that beat West Ham which, presuming they do what they did in the first ten minutes and not the remaining 80, should be a good thing.

4. As far as  I can tell, there’s no sign of Michael Owen doing much to earn his £110k a week this weekend. Some bloke called Andy Carroll might play though.

5. Without wishing to put too finer point on it, Newcastle are a mess. The following words give you a flavour of the problems: Keegan, Wise, Ashley, for sale, no takers, Joe Kinnear, heart bypass surgery. Oh, and did we mention that Kevin Nolan doesn’t score goals any more before we took 4.5 million of your English pounds for him?

Reasons to be fearful…
6. Gary Megson isn’t worried about setting Bolton a points total because “mathematics has no place in football.” Except of course when they’re deciding which team has scored more goals, and which place everyone should be in in the table… so nothing particularly important.

7. In fact Megson, in typically contradictory fashion, has also been telling the Manchester Evening News this week that 40 points is the magic number. Make your mind up!

Statements of the bleedin’ obvious
8. Here’s a whole load of really boring statistics which tell you absolutely nothing about what will happen in the game. I only bring this to your attention because people who write Wdrs instead of Wanderers really piss me off. It’s lazy and it’s inaccurate… or shld tht b inaccur8?

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The Bolton Wanderers match report you won’t read in the papers (or see on Match of the Day)

Here’s what the various Bolton Wanderers message boards made of the 3-0 hammering at Goodison Park:

- “The gulf in class was embarrassing, especially considering Everton played 120 minutes in mid week.”

- “We got absolutely battered: no passion, no skill, no ideas” … “we are on the edge of the abyss.”

- “Gary Megson went way over the top today playing five at the back. He has to go” … “Gretar Steinsson in midfield, Andy O’Brien at right back? He got it totally wrong” … “we completely surrendered the midfield battle.”

- “Why didn’t we get at them rather than letting them have the ball and dominate the play. It’s too negative” … “Everton are nothing special” … “or have they been added to the list, along with the top four, of teams that we just don’t even bother against?”

- “Perhaps selling Kevin Nolan wasn’t such a great idea after all, he’d have got stuck in more than Mark Davies did today.”

- “Megson’s post-match comments were just complete nonsense.” … “blaming everyone else as usual.”

- “Ariza Makukula is not even fit to play in the Championship” … “He has no first touch and is even worse than Mario Jardel.”

- “Where was Ricardo Gardner?”

- “Alan Gowling on GMR said Bolton’s performance was the worst he could remember by a Premier League side.”

- “If this was a blip then fine, but if we really are as bad as this performance suggests then we could well go down.”

OR

- “The fans should stay off Megson’s back. It’s not a game we could realistically expect to win” … “we’ll probably still finish the season somewhere between 8th and 10th.”

- “Why is it that the fans only come out in force on the message boards when we’ve lost?” … “It’s just one bad performance, everyone needs to calm down.”

- “Let’s forget this game. Looking at our next six games, there’s plenty of points up for grabs over the next few weeks.”

Disagree? Have your say in the comments below…

Watch Everton 3-0 Bolton video highlights here

Sources: BBC 606, The Bolton News, The Wanderer, Rivals, Bolton Banter, Bolton Wanderers Mad, Burnden Aces.

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He may have been left out of the team’s only win of the month against Spurs, but the emergence of Chris Basham in January was a ray of light as the team struggled to pick up points against Arsenal, Manchester United and Blackburn.

He looked committed and assured at right back at the Emirates and then showed his maturity by stepping in to midfield against the European champions.

He looks like a real find and, along with the signing of Mark Davies, is a good reason not to be too disappointed about Kevin Nolan’s departure to Newcastle.

Disagree? Have your say in the comments below…

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The final round of ins, outs and shaking it all abouts at Bolton Wanderers this January

Ins
With the three ins this year – Davies, Sebastien Puygrenier and Ariza Makukula – already in the bag, Bolton barely got a mention on Sky Sports News’ overly-dramatic transfer deadline day coverage (was the countdown of the last 10 seconds, accompanied by pictures from Big Ben, really necessary, especially as the Premier League had extended the deadline due to the bad weather?).

Gary Megson confirmed after the Spurs game that he was targetting two more signings before the window shut at 5pm yesterday, so the Wanderers failure to bring in any more new players has to be seen as leaving Megson short of what he feels he needs to keep us in the Premier League.

In particular, Kevin Nolan’s departure would now seem to leave a hole in the Wanderers’ midfield, in spite of Mark Davies’ impressive home debut against Spurs. The Bolton News said that Rangers’ Barry Ferguson was the man Megson had earmarked to fill Nolan’s boots, but in the end the Scottish club weren’t interested in selling either him or Pedro Mendes, another midfield target. The same was true of Portsmouth’s Sean Davis.

The Wanderers faced a different problem in their pursuit of Sporting Lisbon midfielder Miguel Veloso: a lack of cash, although many papers and websites continued to link Veloso with a move to Bolton even after Megson had said the deal was dead on Match of the Day.

Outs
Failing to field the full quota of subs at Arsenal in early January meant Bolton were never likely to offload too many players this January. Nolan’s departure to Newcastle came as a shock to many though, including some of the players. Heidar Helguson’s move to QPR caused less distress.

The key statistic here, though, is that for the second year running Bolton have made a profit in the January transfer window, despite Megson claiming he did have money to spend. And for the second year running we have sold – in the eyes of many – our most influential player (although Kevin Davies might have something to say about that).

Shaking it all abouts
A move for Henrik Larsson never materialised, and rumours of Fred’s imminent arrival at the Reebok Stadium also turned out to be pie in the sky. Ditto for striker Pavel Pogrebnyak and Marco Zorro.

The key questions that arise from all this are as follows:

1. If Megson had money to spend, why is it that he failed to bring in more players?

2. Is it Megson’s fault for not making Bolton an attractive enough proposition for players; is it Phil Gartside’s fault for not making even more money available for the likes of Veloso; or is it just unfortunate that other clubs weren’t willing to sell?

3. Given no-one else was brought in after his departure, was selling Nolan to Newcastle a bad move?

4. Does making a profit in the transfer window represent a lack of ambition or good business sense?

5. Is the January transfer window a welcome distraction or a farcical circus that should be abolished?

If you have the answers to any of these questions, please share your wisdom in the comment box below…

“Abject, feeble, gutless, wretched…” No that’s not Gary Megson’s latest views on Bolton fans but the News of the World’s judgment on Spurs.

The Guardian put the blame squarely at the door of Harry Redknapp and berates the Spurs boss for trying to blame Juande Ramos… at least he isn’t balming the fans is all I can say.

More interestingly from a Bolton perspective, The Guardian quotes Kevin Davies as saying that the squad were surprised by Kevin Nolan’s departure for Newcastle, but their chalkboard feature shows that Davies did more than enough to cover for his former captain’s absence. His work rate put Roman Pavlyuchenko in the shade, apparently…

by Guardian Chalkboards

The Daily Mail also says Nolan wasn’t missed and reckons Mark Davies looks like a more than adequate replacement. Or as the Mirror put it: “Kevin Nolan quickly went from ‘Mr Bolton’ to ‘Mr Who?’ for the Reebok faithful.”

The Telegraph concentrates on Gary Megson’s recent problems rather than Redknapp’s and suggests that victory was the Bolton fans’ reward for having “stuck by their manager this time”. It goes on to rave about the performances of both Davieses too:

The Davies boys provided Bolton with the sensual difference between the two teams. One a bludgeoning front man, masterful in the air, resilient to the last; the other youthful, nimble, imaginative, infectious.

The Times also leads on Bolton rather than Redknapp’s woes, but only because their reporter saw fit to use Kevin Davies’ brace as an excuse to have a dig about his style of play:

Having left his calling card on the shins of many of the country’s top defenders, Kevin Davies is not the most popular player in the Premier League, but his enormous value to Bolton Wanderers was underlined yesterday when he scored twice to kill off Tottenham’s challenge.

The Times goes on to say that Gary Megson apologised to Bolton fans for calling them “pathetic” after the game, although it doesn’t actually have the quotes of him saying it.

The Express can’t seem to decide whether it agrees with what Megson said last week or not. It kicks off its match report by saying: “Sections of the Bolton crowd were not the only pathetic and stupid things at the Reebok yesterday.” Before continuing:

Wanderers boss Gary Megson has been to PR in the past week what oil company Total has to British workers by using the two words to brand some of his own fans then letting captain Kevin Nolan go to Newcastle.

Have your say in the comment box below..

Watch video highlights of Bolton 3-2 Spurs here.

Read the fans’ view on the game here.

After labelling Bolton Wanderers fans “pathetic” on Thursday, Gary Megson tried to back-track a bit yesterday.

He now thinks that the majority of Wanderers fans are “fantastic”:

“I’ve got to the point where I’ve said something about it, but I’m not talking about Bolton supporters, I’m talking about a section of them who think that that’s the right thing to do.

“What I am pleased about is that I’ve had a lot of emails since the articles went in supporting what I’ve been saying and distancing themselves from the things that were said.

“It was only a handful of people who were doing it towards the end that overshadowed everything that went on. But the backing that we got at Blackburn was fantastic.”

But with the team still without a win in 2009 and getting ever closer to that relegation zone, and having just sold the club captain with no definite replacement in sight, will the fans forgive him?

What do you think will (or should) happen if we go a goal down this afternoon, or if we lose the game?

Have your say on Gary Megson in the comment box below…