Manny Road

It’s limbo baby, limbo

Thursday January 7th, 2010

Phil Gartside auditions for Gary Megson's replacement (via Dave Hogg)

In the first post by one of Manny Road’s new writers, Wanderers fan Bruce Garrow gives his view on the Gary Megson/Owen Coyle saga…

We’ve never had it so good. Barring a lengthy cup run or an ambitious voyage into the top half of the table, a managerial shake-up is as much excitement as Bolton fans can expect this year. Once again the media searchlight hovers our way as General Gartside cleans out a mess of his own making.

Owen Coyle and Gary Megson were both in the running to succeed Sammy Lee back in 2007, but our chairman recommended Coyle to Burnley and they took him at his word. In the meantime, Megson’s stewardship was thankfully consigned to history at the turn of the year. So now we’re afforded a rare chance to see how history can play out with Gartside’s other favourite, who is likely to return, pending compensation.

Coyle took over at Burnley at that time and in the next season had them on a headline-grabbing semi-final run in the League Cup. It took the fourth time of asking before a premier league side could put them out of it. He continued the fine form by promoting Burnley to the premiership at the end of the year, and so far this season, mid-table safety.

Before being linked to the Bolton job, Coyle knocked back an offer to take over at Celtic. So you can imagine the consternation from the media at this turn of events. A loyal manager spurning the opportunity from one of his favourite clubs for a bigger wage, bigger transfer kitty and Champions League football, only to publicly leap at the chance to join lowly Bolton?

It would boggle the mind if you weren’t 1) a Wanderers supporter or 2) a realist. Burnley can’t offer the money, resources or transfer power that Bolton possesses. These are plain and simple facts. We also have several years of premiership experience and money behind us. If Burnley don’t go down this season, they may well suffer second-season syndrome, like Reading (or probably Hull) and implode next year anyway. A premiership pedigree takes time to earn and this won’t be lost on a manager as savvy as Owen Coyle.

This hasn’t stopped the media spinning populist hogwash at our expense. If you believed everything you read; our impending capture of Burnley’s manager is an affront to the integrity and loyalty of the modern game. Either that or it’s a suicidal lateral career-move that will surely see both clubs relegated.

No more than us cruel fans deserve after unjustifiably bullying the honourable Megson out of a job. He was only doing the best Bolton can hope for after all. We’re a jumped-up championship outfit aren’t we? Believable only if you ignore the facts that Megson’s Bolton hadn’t kept a clean sheet all year, after spending heavily on defense in the transfer market. Or that his side frequently became edgy after taking the lead and surrendered it more often than not.

Funny, but I can’t recall similar nonsense when media-darling Harry Redknapp took flight to Tottenham, leaving poor Portsmouth to flounder after he’d taken them as far as he could go. The media were strangely pragmatic back then.

Column-filling speculation aside, we’re once again in that nice, comfy limbo that lies between managers. The bluntly practical, but unfulfilling Megson-era is a thing of the past. It was sometimes fun, he was sometimes our Ginger Mourinho, he took the slings and arrows of outrageous fans pretty well but he no longer has to lie in bed with Bolton, complaining about us hogging all the quilt. His search for a club that loves him can continue.

We can sit and wait for the country to thaw, our fixtures to resume, and maybe we can dream of an ambitious manager and Europe, once more…

Your views welcome below…

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