Would you buy a second hand car off these boys?

Aspirations have changed at Bolton since the dark days of Gary Megson. The arrival of Owen Coyle followed by our impressive start to the season had the more optimistic of us counting air miles and dusting off our Bulgarian phrase-books. Even when European qualification had passed us by – embarrassingly so in the cup – a top half finish was still on the cards right up to the end of the season.

Never mind. Coyle’s inherited Megson’s bunch of cloggers. Once he’s had the summer to make serious changes, we’ll be back to chasing Europe again. Surely relegation battles are a thing of the past? Aren’t they?

Maybe not. Our form after Christmas was relegation-standard, and the end of the season – five defeats on the bounce – was abysmal. It wouldn’t be the first time poor form at the end of one season has carried over to the next. Add to that our tough start to the season and it wouldn’t be a great surprise to see us rock-bottom after the first seven games. We’ll have easier runs to follow, but everything looks that bit tougher if you’re sat at the bottom and confidence may have taken a bit of a battering.

So how relevant is end-of-season form to performance in next campaign? Let’s hope the answer is ‘not very’. Only two previous premier league teams have ever lost their last five matches: Sunderland in 2003 and Derby in 2008. Both teams finished bottom and were relegated. Sunderland set a record low points tally of nineteen. Derby set a new one with eleven. We are therefore proud holders of another record – the only premier league side to have lost their last five games without being relegated.

So are we realistic relegation candidates, and if so who else is? Maybe recent history can give us some pointers.

Teams relegated from the premier league over the last ten years generally fit into one or more of the following categories:

1. Newly promoted

The omens aren't good, Neil

The most obvious category. Thirteen of the last thirty relegated sides were newly promoted, and not since the class of 2001 – Bolton, Blackburn, and Fulham, who are all still there – have all three promoted sides stayed up. Looking on the bright side, it’s 1998 since all three promoted teams were relegated (Bolton, Barnsley, and Crystal Palace), so maybe at least one will survive?

Candidates: QPR, Norwich, Swansea

2. Narrowly avoided relegation
Five of the last ten years’ relegated sides – including each of the last two years – finished in 17th place the previous year, so history suggests there’s a 50:50 chance Wolves will be in the mix next season.
For the record those relegated sides were Derby, Sunderland, West Brom, Hull and West Ham, and those that have survived were Fulham, Wigan, Portsmouth, Everton, and Bolton.

Although no team finishing 16th has been relegated the next year, the closeness of this year’s relegation scrap suggests that the other last day survivors, Wigan and Blackburn, could also be in the mix.
Candidates: Wolves.
Possible: Wigan, Blackburn

3. Second season
Five of the 30 slots have gone to teams ‘enjoying’ their second season in the top flight. In the case of West Brom and Hull, they had also narrowly avoided relegation the previous season, but the other three – Ipswich, Reading, and Birmingham – had finished in the top half.

Newcastle and West Brom are the two clubs facing their second season. West Brom have steadied the ship under Roy Hodgson and will be targeting mid-table at least. Of the two, Newcastle would be the more likely candidates for me, but only because of indications of internal problems and my belief that Pardew is a poor manager, although they should have the finances to build a decent side after the sale of Andy Carroll.

Candidates: Newcastle and West Brom.

4. Finished the previous season badly
Accounts for six of the thirty relegation slots in the last ten years. Two of these were teams that had also narrowly avoided relegation, but the other four all finished comfortably mid-table, albeit in poor form, reminiscent of this year’s Bolton.

Leicester finished the 2000/01 season with nine defeats in their last ten and dropping from 4th to 13th in the process. They carried this form into the new season, getting thumped by newly promoted Bolton in their first game of the new campaign, losing seven of their first ten games, and being rooted to the foot of the table for most of the season.

Southampton finished 12th in 2004 but with only two points from their last five games. Again, this carried over to the new campaign, with them winning only one of their first twelve and ultimately finishing bottom.

Charlton finished the 2005/06 season in 12th place despite four defeats in their last five then started the next season with seven defeats and only one win in their first ten games, ultimately finishing 19th.

Birmingham’s impressive 2009/10 season saw them defy expectations and claim a top ten place, but also saw them win only one of their last ten games. Whilst the following year started with a four-game unbeaten run, they only managed one win in the first eight, and ultimately a poor end to a topsy-turvy season saw them relegated on the last day.

In four of the last ten seasons, one of the relegated teams have had the worst form of any surviving team in the last five games of the previous campaign. Obviously this also means that the other six teams that finished bottom of the form guide survived, including Everton in 2004 and Man City in 2007 who went on to enjoy top half finishes the following year.

Remember, though, that losing your last five games is unprecedented for any surviving club, so Bolton are in uncharted territory. We managed less than a point a game since Christmas (only Blackpool and West Ham had worse records) and with our diabolical away record, a tricky start at newly promoted QPR (reminiscent of Leicester in 2002) closely followed by games against five of last season’s top six and things could look bleak by mid-October.

Last season’s only other premier league ‘survivor’ with less than a point per game in their last five was Arsenal, who are clearly in no danger of relegation.

Candidates: Bolton

5. Other factors
This category covers other potential ‘warning signs’: financial troubles, loss of a long-term manager, change of ownership, daft managerial sackings and disastrous appointments.

Many of the teams already mentioned also fit into this category. Leicester had recently lost Martin O’Neill. Charlton had lost Curbishley and followed up with three managers the following year. Southampton lost Strachan and appointed Sturrock (briefly) then Wigley (laughably), and so on.

Only six of our thirty relegated teams do not fit into at least one of the categories above. Two of these – Leeds in 2004 and Portsmouth in 2010 – were victims of financial meltdown, as the consequences of overspending took them from European qualification to relegation in short time.

Another – Newcastle – had recently changed ownership, and were going through their Laurel and Hardy phase as new owner Mike Ashley was demonstrating why he should never have been allowed anywhere near a professional football club. There were already murmurings of discontent before Keegan walked out at the start of their relegation season.

Barring sudden loss of interest from the Arabs / Russians / Americans, there are a couple of potential candidates from this category.

Blackburn’s recent change of ownership coupled with the appointment of an inexperienced manager probably put them at the top of the list.

Bet you daren't appoint ... him!

Mike Ashley still should be allowed nowhere near a football club, and Newcastle’s sacking of Hughton and appointment of Pardew seems a bit of an odd one. Again there are murmurings from within the club, and the sale of your captain and main goal threat to a championship club doesn’t bode well, so let’s add them too.

Aston Villa’s appointment of McLeish is the most head-scratchingly daft for a while, but they have too much money and (currently) too good a squad to be genuine candidates.

Candidates: Blackburn, Newcastle.

That leaves only three clubs out of the last thirty relegated that were relegated without any of the ‘warning signs’ listed above, which suggests that if you’re an established premier league club not mentioned thus far, you’re probably safe..

Summary: put your money on …
It’s difficult to look beyond the three promoted sides, and likely that at least a couple will be in the mix. Other prime candidates for me would be; Blackburn due to their potential for off-field turmoil with the new owners and because they narrowly avoided relegation this year, Newcastle due to Mike Ashley, Alan Pardew, and second season syndrome, Wolves simply because the worst placed survivor tends to have an even chance of going down, and finally Bolton due to our poor form at the end of last season and our difficult schedule at the start of this one, but mainly so I don’t jinx us by saying we’ll be safe.

To narrow it down further, I’d expect Wolves to build on their survival in the last two seasons and Bolton to have too much pedigree, too solid a set-up and too good a manager to be in the mix after Christmas.

So perm any three from Norwich, QPR, Swansea, Newcastle, and Blackburn.

There you go – the three relegated teams will definitely come out of that bunch. Probably.

- Wakey

At number 9 in my countdown of the best Bolton Wanderers goals of the year is…

9. Stelios v Derby County (2.1.2008)

[googlevideo=http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7799571939370488968&ei=aR9NSZr_OojojgLJm-nJCw&q=bolton+wanderers+v+derby&hl=en]

You can see the top 10 Bolton Wanderers goals of 2008 in full here.

If you disagree with any of my choices or have any views on the goals I’ve picked, please feel free to have your say in the comment box below. I might even argue back.

- Kevin Nolan has ‘quite literally been taking a leaf out of Roy Keane’s book,’ according to The Bolton News. Apparently he’s been reading up on the Sunderland manager (but if he really was ‘quite literally taking a leaf out of Keane’s book’, wouldn’t there be some kind of leaf extraction involved in the process? Or am I taking the phrase ‘quite literally’ a little too literally?).

- Thankfully, one man not talking literally in The Bolton News is the club doctor Jonathan Tobin. If he was then the phrase ‘we inspect them top to bottom’ in this feature about player medicals would be rather disturbing (instead, the most disturbing thing about this interview is that he appears to suggest that the transfer window deadline means Bolton don’t always have time to carry out a full medical before signing a player).

- Lots of articles about Johan Elmander this week, who appears to be enjoying his moment in the sun (as does his manager, who doubt feels somewhat vindicated). Sky Sports’ Chris Kamara is still not convinced, though, despite picking Elmander as his player of the weekend (although having watched Kamara babble and blunder his way through his commentary from the Stadium of Light on Sky’s Soccer Saturday, I’m not entirely convinced Kamara would even recognise Elmander if he walked in to him).

- The Northampton Chronicle (of all places) is among the many places that report Gary Megson’s interest in Sheffield Wednesday defender Mark Beevers. I always enjoy the Northampton Chronicle’s transfer gossip stories because they tend to produce the world’s longest headlines (and they also cover Bolton Wanderers stories that you won’t find on The Bolton News).

- Another transfer gossip story you won’t read in The Bolton News is Megson’s alleged interest in Derby’s Miles Addison… or this one about our supposed £17 million bid (yes, that’s £17m… can someone call an ambulance for Mr Gartside?) for for Standard Liege’s Axel Witsel… or rumours that Nicky Hunt might stay at Birmingham… or tittle tattle about a move for Bristol Rovers’ Rickie Lambert.

- Patronising headline of the week would go to this story about Megson abondoning long ball football in favour of the beautiful game, except I’m not sure it quite makes sense: ‘Bolton Wanderers can play for football!’ (What’s the ‘for’ there for?)

- And finally… back to Kevin Nolan, and on the same day as he said reading Roy Keane’s books (or extracting leaves from them) had taught him that scoring goals isn’t the be all and end all for midfielders, he’s also in The Bolton News saying that he needs to get back amongst the goals (go figure).

- This interview with Kevin Nolan in which he follows in Gary Megson’s footsteps by lavishing praise on former Wanderers manager Sammy Lee (shame he wasn’t more supportive when Lee was his boss).

- Megson justifying rejecting loan moves from QPR and Derby for Heidar Helguson and Danny Shittu by saying: ‘We need more bodies and that has got to be done in January’ (why didn’t he apply the same logic when he got shut of Blerim Dzemaili on transfer deadline day?).

- One man who has gone out on loan is youngster Nathan Woolfe, although this Wrexham website doesn’t seem to know how to spell his name (nice pun though).

- Megson telling everyone who’ll listen how good he thinks Liverpool are (let’s hope he has something different to say in the dressing room to the players).

- Big Sam Allardyce declaring: ‘I just want a football club that has a great ambition to be successful’ (a spanner in the works for those Wanderers fans singing his name at the Everton game a couple of weeks ago).

- And finally… ahead of this afternoon’s Liverpool game a reminder of a great victory at Anfield with goals from three great Wanderers: Jay-Jay Okocha, Youri Djorkaeff and, er… Mario Jardel (remember him?)…

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7jVZFxUGHsE]

Bolton Wanderers play Hull City this afternoon and the contrast between the two clubs couldn’t be more marked.

Bolton: fighting relegation, playing with fear, in decline, struggling to keep the faith of disillusioned fans.

Hull: Riding high in the Premier League, in the ascendancy, full of confidence, living the dream.

The reason for these differences is pretty clear: Bolton Wanderers are managed by Gary Megson (dull, confrontational, uninspiring); Hull City are managed by Phil Brown (interesting, engaging, full of personality and verve).

Phil Brown's latest team bonding initiative at Hull. Picture courtesy of epugachev, some rights reserved

One manager has inspired his team to believe that anything is possible, the other has created a culture of negativity and low expectations.

This week Brown has been carefully denying he wants to leave Hull for his ‘spiritual home’ Bolton, without actually saying he definitely wouldn’t want the job should Gary Megson get sacked (I believe they call this a non-denial denial).

Let’s just hope his comments about Phil Gartside – claiming he left for Derby under a cloud because the chairman failed to guarantee him a shot at the manager’s job when Sam Allardyce left – haven’t made it impossible for him to return to the Wanderers while Gartside is still in charge.

Because it’s been pretty clear for a while now that the future of Bolton Wanderers is the orange of Brown’s fake suntan rather than the orange of Megson’s hair.

The retirement of Wanderers legend Alan Stubbs today made this the perfect time to make him the first entrant in to Manny Road’s Bolton Wanderers Hall of Fame.

The first thing I did when I found out he’s hanging up his boots was search for my favourite Stubbs moment – his winning goal against Aston Villa in that memorable FA Cup run of 1994.

Sadly, it was nowhere to be seen on You Tube. Worse still, because Stubbs’ Bolton career came just before the internet age, searching for him on the web leaves you wondering if he ever played for the Whites at all: no You Tube videos, no Flickr photos; even a Google image search brings up page after page of Stubbs in action for Celtic, Everton and Derby County, but virtually nothing of him playing for the Wanderers.

His Wikipedia page does not have a section dedicated to his time at Bolton, instead it’s included under ‘Early Career’.

So if anyone’s got any old Stubbs footage or photos – especially from that Villa game – let’s get them up on the web and redress the balance a little.

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Taking up the theme of yesterday’s post about attendances, Georgyw complains on The Bolton News forum that “it was a big mistake to build the Reebok out of town. He (Phil Gartside) must admit his error.”

Quite rightly, the responses take Georgyw to task, but I think it’s worth exploring this point further, particularly as the tenth anniversary of Bolton Wanderers’ move to the Reebok Stadium came and went last year without much song and dance made about just how important it was in shaping the club’s modern history.

If you want to know what Bolton Wanderers would be like in 2008 if we were still at Burnden Park, take a look at Oldham Athletic, Barnsley and Swindon Town, who all tasted the Premier League at one time or another but failed to upgrade their infrastructure to match their top flight status.

In contrast, look at Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Derby (OK they had a stinker last season but they’ll probably be back in the not too distant future), who like Bolton have all been in and out of the Premier League but have managed to avoid sinking without a trace after relegations.

And would Ivan Campo, Jay-Jay Okocha and Youri Djorkaeff et al have signed for Bolton if the first thing they had seen was the Normid Superstore? I think not.

Fireworks at The Reebok Stadium, courtesy of d.nuttall on flickr

It’s easy to criticise modern stadiums for being soulless, homogeneous mechano sets. Yes, they all come with corporate sponsorship and McDonald’s and KFC for neighbours. But it’s better than having a supermarket at one end of the ground, right?

The biggest problems we’ve had at the Reebok is the club’s futile attempts to create an atmosphere. You can have as many drummers, singing sections (not a great success against Stoke, according to this thread) and cheerleaders as you want (am I the only one who felt uncomfortable watching grown men drool over half-naked teenage girls?), but the fans just want exciting football and good results.

I never understood why they insisted on playing “I Feel Good” after the Wanderers scored. It’s the same with those ridiculously contrived celebrations they have at the Carling Cup Final. The one time you definitely don’t need encouraging to get behind your team is when they’ve just scored a goal or won a trophy. Playing “Rocking All Over The World” just ruins the moment.

This thread suggests things are getting better, and this blog indicates the club is doing pretty well in terms of offering value for money. But I still think fans would happily forego half-time entertainment for more entertainment during the game itself.

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