Your guide to all the predictions and Mystic Meggery ahead of Bolton Wanderers v Middlesbrough

Reasons to be cheerful
1. Middlesbrough have far more injury concerns – Tuncay, Adam Johnson, Robert Huth to name a few – than Bolton, although Andy O’Brien will be back in contention for a place, so…

2. Boro are currently 19th in the Premier League, largely because they have failed to score in 10 of their last 13 league games.

3. Gareth Southgate’s men suffered a demoralising defeat at Stoke last time out.

4. Southgate has even turned to social networking site Twitter as he tries to find answers ahead of today’s clash (allegedly).

5. When Bolton played Middlesbrough at the Riverside earlier this season we recorded one of our best results of the season.

6. According to this analysis, Boro are seriously lacking a captain, creativity in midfield, strikers, mental toughness and a decent goalkeeper. And you thought Bolton have got it bad.

7. Kevin Davies will be determined to prove Fabio Capello wrong, although given that England won both games last week, that’s actually quite a difficult thing to do. Even if Davies scores a hat-trick, I’m sure Mr Capello will sleep quite well tonight. Still, at least Bolton fans will have a good night.

Reasons to be fearful
8. Much like when Bolton travelled to Middlesbrough near the end of last season, Boro will be desperate for a win and, given that Bolton have not exactly been ripping up trees lately, they’ll have earmarked this as a game they can get points from as they seek to avoid the drop… well that’s what it says here anyway. Of course, if Boro weren’t in desperate need of points then I’m sure this story would have been replaced by the usual “we don’t fear Bolton’s physical approach” bullshit.

9. Bolton have not won in over a month and Mark Davies won’t be around to help change that.

10. As usual, Gary Megson has been doing his best to make our opponents feel better about themselves.

11. In our last home game, when nobody gave Fulham a chance, we managed to get beaten 3-1 thanks to some woeful defending.

12. So if Southgate’s plan to go on the attack is true we could be screwed… especially if Andy O’Brien is playing again.

What are your predictions for today’s game between Bolton Wanderers and Middlesbrough? Have your say in the comment box below…

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Fabio Capello has done Bolton a favour by not picking  Cahill, Davies and Taylor

The various Bolton Wanderers message boards erupted in anger last Sunday after Fabio Capello’s latest England squad failed to include Bolton’s Kevin Davies, Matt Taylor and Gary Cahill.

Davies and Cahill had both been included in Capello’s initial 32-man squad but were left out when the England boss whittled it down to 22 following last weekend’s Premier League games.

At first I was tempted to agree with the fans who were threatening to boycott England games from now on. But then I started to think about it a bit more closely.

In the case of Davies and Taylor (I’ll come to Cahill in a second), you have to question whether either of these players are really good enough to play international football. Both are good, honest professionals who always give their best for Bolton Wanderers – and are often crucial in helping us win matches.

But does that make them good enough to play for England? They’ve both been around for a long time and have never really been linked with England places before.

Yes, they’ve both been playing well of late (Davies is the top-scoring English striker in the Premier League), but the it’s only because of a dearth of quality in the positions Davies and Taylor play in that they’re even being mentioned in the same breath as the national team.

The last Wanderer to represent England was Michael Ricketts and his career has never recovered. Of course, Ricketts was a flawed individual with an inflated ego and a work ethic deficiency, and I’m not suggesting being found out at international level would be the final nail in Davies’ and Taylor’s careers like it was with Ricketts. They’re both much tougher mentally than Ricketts to allow that to happen.

But even if Davies is more deserving of a place than Emile Heskey and Carlton Cole, what’s the benefit to Bolton Wanderers of him going to play for England, failing to make an impact and then being vilified in the papers for the next six months?

Let those players take the flack and let Davies get on with scoring goals for Bolton.

My reasoning for being pleased Cahill isn’t playing is entirely different – purely selfish, in fact. I have no doubt that Cahill is good enough to play for his country, and most probably will at some point in his career.

But the moment he puts on an England shirt is the moment it becomes much more difficult for the Wanderers to keep hold of him. On current form, it’s surely only a matter of time before bigger clubs start sniffing around, and getting an England cap will only act as a catalyst for that.

How long before Phil Gartside is made an offer he can’t refuse? Much quicker if Cahill is playing for England.

Yes, it would be great to see Bolton Wanderers players representing England and doing well. But I’d much rather see them representing Bolton Wanderers and helping us win matches.

What do you think? Should Gary Cahill, Kevin Davies and Matt Taylor be playing for England?

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- Despite giving him just four out of 10 in their player ratings, the Telegraph saw fit to dedicate almost half of their match report to Stewart Downing. In fact the Telegraph gives Bolton virtually no credit at all, concentrating instead on Middlesbrough’s deficiencies.

- The Times was much more complimentary, even suggesting that Gary Cahill and Fabrice Muamba were unlucky not to feature in Fabio Capello’s England squad in mid-week (Stewart who?).

- The Independent thinks we could have scored six and suggests Gary Megson should take credit for his man-management of Johan Elmander.

- Elmander’s performance even prompted The Guardian to quote Nelson Mandela (unfortunately this elaborate analysis falls apart if you know that Elmander is Swedish and not South African, as the author claims).

- The Sun keeps it much more simple, as you might expect, but they do emphasise that we were always in control.

What did you think about the Wanderers 3-1 win over Boro? Have your say in the comment box below…

- An England squad that included Wolves (yes, that’s Wolves of the Championship) defender Michael Mancienne, who is on loan from Chelsea because he can’t get a game there (what does Gary Cahill have to do to get a call-up, other than playing consistently well in the Premier League every week?).

- This prediction that, like his predecessors Sam Allardyce and Sammy Lee, Gary Megson’s last game in charge of Bolton could come against Chelsea (roll on December 6th!).

- This addition to the list of Megsonisms from The Bolton News, in which the Wanderers manager claims we ‘gave everything we got’ against Liverpool (if anyone can explain what that means please do so in the comments section below… still, didn’t stop The Bolton News using it as their headline). And yet another ill-judged Megson quote, this time from The People.

- Evidence that the stewading at the Reebok Stadium is just as bad as it was when I was at Upton Park earlier this season.

- Nicky Hunt enjoying himself at Birmingham City.

- More reports linking us with Swansea’s Ferrie Bodde, who scored again at the weekend. We’re also being linked with Deportivo La Coruna midfielder Julian de Guzman.

- And finally… this article suggesting Rob Styles is available for after-dinner speaking (although I can’t actually find the site they’re talking about… incidentally, the Styles out of the Premier League petition still needs your signature).

As well as the now infamous ‘you’re a wanker’ chant, the other song aimed at Gary Megson from the visitors’ section of White Hart Lane on Sunday afternoon was ‘you don’t know what you’re doing.’

I wrote yesterday about the justifications for the ‘wanker’ chant, and I’m afraid the insight we got in to Megson’s logic only confirmed that the ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’ song was spot on too.

Credit to The Bolton News here – for once – for asking the question that everyone wanted to know the answer to: why did you wait 85 minutes before bothering to do anything to try and change the course of the game? Here’s how Megson answered…

Not too many of the players wanted to come off and we were doing okay. We were creating opportunities and there was no-one playing particularly badly. We made the changes purely and simply to put fresh legs on. Everyone has their own opinion when I should have done that but we were causing Spurs some problems even with 10 men.

Firstly, the only person causing Spurs problems was their own goalkeeper, Heurelho Gomes, whose flapping and flailing we failed to exploit.

Secondly, since when did the players get to choose when they come off? Do you think that Fabio Capello asked Gareth Barry for his opinion when he hauled him at half-time during England’s recent World Cup qualifier against Kazakhstan?

Finally, what’s the point of bringing fresh legs on with five minutes left? Is the five minutes of extra rest that Johan Elmander and Fabrice Muamba got really going to give them that much of an edge for the game against Everton on Wednesday night?

Barely anything that Megson says seems to add up and that’s why – as much as any results on the pitch – he is likely to face more abuse in the coming weeks unless he pulls a rabbit out of the hat… or Phil Gartside puts us all out of our misery.

- The Independent’s match report of the West Ham game, in which Gianfranco Zola makes the questionable assertion that his side were in complete control until Robert Green’s howler.

- Vital Bolton Wanderers’ player ratings for the West Ham game, which seem a bit low on the whole.

- Also from The Independent, their reporter Glenn Moore arguing that the so-called 39th game, an idea that now seems dead in the water, would be good for clubs like Bolton (he actually says Wigan and Hull but it’s fair to say we fall in to the same category in terms of stature).

- Michael Owen’s omission dominated the headlines in the reporting of Fabio capello’s latest England squad. But from a Wanderers perspective, the inclusion of Matthew Upson ahead of Gary Cahill after yesterday’s game raises a few eyebrows. And Robert Green, really?

- Gary Megson is planning to buy (yet another) defensive midfielder in the January transfer window.

- And finally… an amusing (albeit fictional) insight in to Megson’s sex life.

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