WestHam
8 things you (probably don’t) need to know about Bolton v Newcastle
Saturday, February 28th, 2009 | BWFC News, BWFC People, Danny Guthrie, Gary Megson, Kevin Nolan | No Comments
Image via Wikipedia
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.
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Reebok round-up (16.02.09)
Monday, February 16th, 2009 | Ali Al-Habsi, BWFC News, BWFC People, Danny Shittu, Gary Megson, Jlloyd Samuel, Johan Elmander, Kevin Davies, Mark Davies, Matt Taylor, Nat Lofthouse | No Comments
What Manny Road has been reading (and thinking) about Bolton Wanderers
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Is this a good enough reason to keep Gary Megson?
Sunday, February 15th, 2009 | BWFC News, BWFC People, Gary Megson, Phil Gartside, Roy McFarland, Sammy Lee | No Comments
- Image via Wikipedia
How Alex Ferguson almost changed my mind about the Bolton manager
I’m keen for my view that Gary Megson should be sacked at the end of the season, even if we do stay up, to be proven wrong. Mainly because I want to see my team win and get behind them.
As well as asking my readers for reasons why I’m wrong, I’ve also been actively searching for excuses to change my mind. Here’s the nearest I came last week…
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Bolton Wanderers (not) hit by Icelandic banking collapse
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 | BWFC News | 3 Comments
The story you won’t have read in The Bolton News or on the official club website…
*Several parts of this story were altered as the story evolved. In the interests of transparency, all changes have been recorded for posterity, hence crossings out, brackets and UPDATES (sorry if this is confusing)*
**UPDATE 5 (19.10.2008): (not) added to headline. Original headline read ‘Bolton Wanderers hit by Icelandic banking collapse’. See new post here for explanation.**
Much has been made in the press of West Ham’s connections to the Icelandic banking collapse, but it appears Bolton could lose money in the crisis too.
The Guardian today (October 14) reported that several Premier League clubs are facing financial headaches following the virtual nationalisation of high street banks in the UK. But Bolton’s connections to Iceland apparently leave them in an particularly vulnerable position. The paper’s Digger column said:
Bolton Wanderers have most to fear. Singer & Friedlander, the operation belonging to the collapsed Icelandic bank Kaupthing, is in administration. Bolton would now appear to be debtors to a huge list of creditors who are clamouring for their funds.
Of course, being a national newspaper, The Guardian gives Bolton’s woes only one paragraph in an article that is more concerned with the potential problems at Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal.
So naturally, after reading this, I turned to The Bolton News website and bwfc.co.uk for a more in-depth analysis.
What did I find? A story about fans being encouraged to bring flags to the Blackburn game on Saturday leading the news on both sites and no mention of the club’s connections to Iceland in sight.
An admirable initiative no doubt, but was this really the most important thing that happened on Planet Bolton Wanderers today? I dare say the club’s accountant doesn’t think so.
:UPDATE: Yesterday The Bolton News reported that the British Government has loaned an Icelandic bank £100m, but it made no mention of Bolton Wanderers’ links to country’s banking crisis.
:UPDATE 2: Found this discussion on The Wanderer in which fans with more financial know-how than myself call in to question the validity of The Guardian story. It would be nice if the club could come out with similar statements of reassurance.
:UPDATE 3: The plot thickens. I’m told The Bolton News carried the story on their back page this morning, however the website version was there one minute and gone the next. Details on this discussion here.
:UPDATE 4: Apparently the ‘back page’ mentioned in update 3 was ‘a metaphorical’ one. Can anyone confirm what was on the back page of The Bolton News this morning (they don’t sell it here in London)?
Now you see it… Google brings up The Bolton News as result number one in a search for ‘Bolton Wanderers credit crunch’…
Google results for 'Bolton Wanderers credit crunch'
Now you don’t… but the link leads to an empty page and the story appears to have been removed almost as soon as it went up…
Disappearing act on The Bolton News
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Ivan Campo Appreciation Society: Exhibit D
Thursday, October 9th, 2008 | BWFC People, Ivan Campo, Ivan Campo Appreciation Society, John McGinlay | No Comments
In loving memory of Bolton Wanderers legend Ivan Campo…
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a bug in the system of the BWFC latest news feed that displays on the top right-hand side of this blog. It kept crashing and I couldn’t figure out why.
Well, after some trial and error, it appears the bug was caused by the news feed from the Manchester Evening News. Since I removed the MEN feed it’s worked perfectly.
More proof that Mancunians and Boltonians don’t mix came in the MEN’s report of the Wanderers 3-1 win at West Ham. As Vital Bolton Wanderers pointed out, their assertion that Bolton had not won at Upton Park for 44 years was slightly wrong… they were a mere 41 years out.
In fact, Bolton also won at West Ham in the League Cup in 1994, when a Super John McGinlay brace helped us on our way to Wembley.
But the long wait for a league win at Upton Park was ended in 2005 when your favourite Spaniard and mine Ivan Campo scored the decisive goal.
So, for making the Mancs look stupid, we salute you Ivan…
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Recommended reading: 7.10.08
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 | BWFC People, Sam Allardyce | No Comments
What Manny Road was reading (and thinking) about Bolton Wanderers yesterday…
- Alan Hansen reckons Hull City and West Brom definitely won’t get relegated, which means it’s more likely that Bolton will.
- Not everyone was over the moon with the free coach travel to West Ham, especially this fan who had to sit next some drunken teenagers on the way home.
- Following on from my post about the Met’s approach to swearing Bolton Wanderers fans, more evidence of double standards within the game as Joe Kinnear gets off scot-free for his four-letter tirade against journalists.
- Sam Allardyce lashes out at his former boss Mike Ashley for not giving him enough cash (déjà vu anyone?).
- And finally… this picture of Bolton from 1959 which shows Burnden Park in the background…
Picture courtesy of Bolton Museum & Archive Service, some rights reserved.
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Bolton Wanderers Hall of Shame #5: The Met Police
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 | BWFC People, Matt Taylor | 4 Comments
Throwing out disabled Bolton Wanderers fans at Upton Park was cowardly…
The small matter of policing a football match probably isn’t at the top of the Metropolitan police’s agenda right now, what with their boss being forced out of office by Boris Johnson and their trigger-happy anti-terrorist tactics against Jean Charles de Menezes three years ago being scrutinised by an inquiry.
But I thought their policing at the West Ham game on Sunday was pretty poor.
From the outset they made it clear they weren’t going to tolerate Wanderers fans making gestures or shouting obscenities in the direction of the West Ham fans. Before the game had even kicked off an officer had given verbal warnings to a couple of lads behind me.
I have no problem with that in theory. Nor was I concerned as the game went on and those same fans were ejected from the ground after failing to heed their warnings. Personally I prefer to watch the game than the opposition fans, having paid £35 to get in.
The problem is that if you’re going to make an example out of Bolton fans then you need to apply the same standards to the West Ham fans too, otherwise you just give the idiots an excuse to cause more trouble.
The Met’s tactics at Upton Park were in stark contrast to Fulham’s segregation policy a few weeks ago, where home and away fans were left to mingle both in the stand and the concourses. It worked pretty well except for when one drunken Fulham fan started taunting the Bolton fans by waving a scarf in their direction (the fan was thrown out by the stewards and the storm in a tea cup blew over pretty quickly).
Was this change in tactics (I assume the Met would also have overseen the policing at Craven Cottage) a response to the widely-reported racist taunts aimed at Sol Campbell by Spurs fans at Portsmouth a week earlier?
Who knows, but it was certainly clear that the police were focusing their efforts on the away fans. A couple of West Ham fans were thrown out towards the end of the first-half but many more went unpunished.
The incident that left a particularly sour taste in the mouth came towards the end of the match after one particularly eloquent West Ham fan started taunting two disabled Wanderers fans who were sat near the divide, shouting ’shut the f*** up you f***ing spastics’ and doing the kind of impressions of disabled people that you usually see in primary school playgrounds.
I looked over at one of the police officers stood near me (he was wearing a cap rather than a helmet so I assume he was more senior) expecting him to instruct one of his men to go and eject the offending Hammer. Instead he stood listening and smirking for a while before eventually sending one of his officers over to issue a pretty tame telling off… to the wrong guy!
A few moments later, when Matty Taylor’s screamer went in, another West Ham fan ran 20 yards to shout more obscenities at the two disabled fans. This was by far the most aggressive act I saw by any fan all afternoon.
So what did the police do? That’s right, they threw out the disabled fans. It was pretty embarrassing really, watching them escort an elderly man on crutches out of the ground. It took them about five minutes just to get him up the stairs.
It was a cowardly decision and a very poor advert for a police force that could do with some good PR right now.
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Recommended reading: 6.10.08
Monday, October 6th, 2008 | BWFC People, Gary Cahill, Gary Megson | No Comments
What Manny Road has been reading today…
- 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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West Ham v Bolton Wanderers: The fans’ view
Sunday, October 5th, 2008 | BWFC People, Gary Cahill, Gary Megson, Gavin McCann, Gretar Steinsson, Jussi Jaaskelainen, Kevin Nolan, Phil Gartside | 1 Comment
The Bolton Wanderers match report you won’t read in the papers or see on Match of the Day
Here’s what the various internet discussion forums made of the 3-1 away win at West Ham United…
- It was a fantastic away win made all the better by the fact it was so unexpected… and with Gavin McCann in the team too!
- It’s now time for everyone to get off Gary Megson’s back and get behind both him and the team.
- People should shut up about McCann too. His passing and tackling were outstanding and he was man of the match. He made Garth Crooks’ team of the week along with Jussi Jaaskelainen.
- After his mistakes for the first two Wanderers goals, Robert Green looks like the most overrated keeper in the Premier League. Jaaskelainen, on the other hand, was world class.
- Gary Cahill’s return to the team has had a huge impact, particularly on Gretar Steinsson and Andy O’Brien.
- Kevin Nolan had a great game too, although he probably won’t get the credit he deserves for it.
- Mark Noble should have been sent off for his tackle on Steinsson.
- The away support was fantastic and for that Phil Gartside deserves some credit for putting on the free bus travel.
- This result leaves Gary Megson’s critics with egg on their faces (this blog included) but we would still be better off in the long term without him.
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Desert Island Goals: Jay-Jay Okocha v West Ham
Sunday, October 5th, 2008 | BWFC People, El-Hadji Diouf, Fabrice Muamba, Gary Megson, Gavin McCann, Jay-Jay Okocha, Joey O'Brien, Sam Allardyce, Sammy Lee, Stelios | 2 Comments
Great goals from Bolton Wanderers history (for the benefit of Gary Megson)…
The simplistic analysis of Gary Megson’s tenure as Bolton Wanderers manager says that he restored the tactics and style of play that had brought us so much success under Sam Allardyce.
It’s certainly true that Megson ditched Sammy Lee’s over-ambitious attempt to bring the pass and move Liverpool groove to the Reebok, but I believe Megson’s Bolton Wanderers are considerably different to Allardyce’s.
The most important difference is this: whilst Allardyce stuffed his team with physical players whose main purpose was to upset the opposition, he also understood that you have to find some room in your starting XI for players who are capable off getting you a goal. How do you ever win a game otherwise?
However negative Allardyce’s game plan may have been, he would never have played three defensive midfielders as Megson has done several times this season with Fabrice Muamba, Gavin McCann and Joey O’Brien.
Allardyce would always find room for a player or two who could cause the opposition defence a headache (and keep supporters interested), either with pace (El-Hadji Diouf), skill (Jay-Jay Okocha) or by just being a right pain in the arse (Stelios).
It’s for this reason that we are no longer able to compete against the likes of Arsenal and Manchester United as we once did in head-to-head games. The current game plan still includes the bit about getting amongst the opposition, upsetting their game and making it difficult for them to play. But it no longer includes a section about how to score goals and put teams on the back foot.
It’s also the reason why we’re unlikely to see a goal like the one Okocha scored against West Ham in 2003, when we play the Hammers again today.
So, just for Gary Megson, here’s a reminder that Bolton Wanderers Premier League success wasn’t just about being defensive…
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