Come breezeblock, let us spread harmony amongst the forumites

Here’s a brilliant contribution from ‘breezeblock‘ a prolific poster on bwfcforum

I went to the Fulham game by train. I don’t do it very often because it’s quicker to drive and no-one complains about the smell on the M60. The trains were slightly messed up because of some essential repairs in Preston…probably having electricity or running water installed. Met up with Wayne and some of the old BWFC board regulars and had a couple of Australia’s finest auburn blush hops-based beverage served in a delightful polyethylene terephthalate decanter (Fosters in a plastic bottle). Would have been nice to have a pint at half time but the queue at 3.39pm was already fourteen deep and I gave up by 4.53pm when that number was down to seven deep. Not only does the beer taste like sheep dip but you have to suffer a similar queuing process as the animals themselves do.

The game was horrible.

Spurted out of the ground to the station to catch a 4.50pm train that never existed. Watched an express train shoot by and waited some more. The next train only went to Manchester Victoria but we got on regardless. As we pulled away I saw forlorn face at the station gate, a cross between Pat Roach and Donald Sutherland…it was Wayne being manhandled and shackled by the transport police. Or maybe the platform was just full, either version is OK.

The announcer told us anyone going to Piccadilly should get off at Bolton. So we did. Then we found out the train to Piccadilly was another 40 minutes so we jumped onto the next train to Victoria where we waited 20 minutes for a Metrolink tram to Piccadilly that never existed. So we got a taxi and got stuck behind a traffic accident near High Street.

Some time later…

Manchester Piccadilly is a great station, fully refurbished, completely revamped. It has everything the modern day train traveller could ask for. It also has the highest number of football tourists immediately following a game at Old Trafford. Every accent, every dialect, every nationality, every single piece of crappy red merchandise from the MUFC superstore packed into endless throbbing carrier bags all shuffling around the concourse. The next train to Stockport was also the next train to Euston. It was a Virgin train, red on the outside and even redder on the inside. We claimed the last two available seats and watched as the middle-class, middle aged types around us tried to work out what BWFC stood for on my son’s hat. A kid opposite had the full MUFC kit on as well as the hat, scarf, MP3 player, magazine, carry bag. He was a walking advert for kackness. Thankfully the Mental Health Act will support people like him as he goes through his life thinking Old Trafford is in Surrey.

We are now arriving at Stockport…

My Thai bride was picking us up but the train had arrived much earlier than expected so I thought I’d have a crafty beer in the station cafe. We walked along the platform and watched the ‘United’ away day special disappear out towards Cheshire without its pointless and valueless cargo and I prayed I would never have to endure such an ordeal again. Surprisingly Jesus heard those prayers. He must have done, he was standing just a few metres away.

On Saturday the 6th February 2010 on platform 3 at Stockport Station I had an epiphany, a spiritual flash and suddenly the world and its fog of confusion was cut through with a blade of clarity so sharp that I now understood dimensional time properties, advanced nucleosynthesis, proportional cosmological principle theory and also why digital alarm clocks go fast when you keep your finger on the forward button but not so when you want to go back.

Jesus was just as I expected…he had a patchy beard, his hair was dark and limp and it licked at his shoulders, teased his angular jawline, delicately overhanging his Fulham training shirt. It was at this moment I realised that Jesus had some friends with him, disciples if you prefer…and one of them bore an uncanny resemblance to Damien Duff. Jesus was Jonathan Greening and he, along with the full Fulham squad and the entire backroom staff of Fulham FC were holed up in the Pumpkin Cafe Bar at Stockport Station following a delay. Their train hadn’t even made it north yet in order for it to turn around and become south bound and full of folk looking like supreme beings…and Damien Duff.

I explained to the womb-monkey that these were the same people we had watched just a few hours ago. The Fulham physio went for a piss and said hello before realised the scarves we had on were blue and white, not black and white. There were so many people in the cafe we couldn’t get in…I looked across at Jesus and although he smiled it was clear there was no room at the inn.

As we walked down the stairs Roy Hodgson was walking up. Hello Roy, I said, I think you got away with that today…I said smiling.
“What?” he replied.
“Were you happy with that in the end?”
“What, the game or the point?” he asked.
“The point…the game wasn’t much to watch from either side.”
“Do you watch that every week,” he enquired.
“Yep, home and away,” I answered and Roy, now at the top of the stairs and us near the bottom, lifted up his chin and gestured his hand to the roof.
“You must have strong necks to watch that every week.”
“Strong necks and thick skins,” I said before wishing him a safe journey.

Outside the dragon was sitting patiently in the car park and we headed home to an evening of Junior Scrabble and as much Vimto as we could stomach. I thought Roy was quite rude but it’s pointless wishing bad things upon him because no matter where he goes, Jesus goes with him.

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Alan Wiley gets in the mood for another balanced performance (via cliff1066)

This post, the first by our second new guest blogger Stephen McClusky, was originally posted on the BBC 606 message board, from where it was swiftly censored on the grounds it would ’cause too much controversy’. In the interests of free speech, here it is…

I know we are probably sick of hearing about the HORRIFIC challenge on mini-Davo; however I need to express my sheer anger and disgust at what was, in my opinion. A VERY cynical (even malicious) tackle on a player who was a massive part of the game.

So here is my honest opinion…

I was trying to understand what was going through Alan Wiley’s mind at the time. You see him go to put the whistle in his mouth, then instead to leave mini-Davo writhing round in pain on the floor until Arsenal scored. This is YET another example of refs ‘helping out’ the big clubs.

Out of interest, have you read the book ‘Seeing Red’ by Graham Poll? It does kind of put the referee’s job in to perspective and I must admit that they have a difficult task with controlling the big games; this is the reason why not many people become pro refs. That said, Poll also states that the worst thing that gets his goat is people ‘questioning the integrity’ of referees. Mr poll, I understand that people do make mistakes, but you CANNOT deny that most of the ‘mistakes’ they do make benefit the ‘bigger’ clubs…strange that!

So do you not wonder why people question referees integrity when we have incidents happening like this every week? The FA will do nothing at all about it, you can appeal but you won’t win, it’s easier to fine/charge a manager for sticking up for his team than it is to look at a dodgy refereeing decision again and evaluate what should have been done.

I believe hands down that referees DO have certain allegiances and DO help out the big clubs. I believe this is more down to pressure from the media and fans more than anything. Think about it – you make a decision that stops a team from qualifying for a lucrative Champions League spot or winning a cup just because you have allowed a ‘less popular club’ to take a perfectly legitimate penalty in the dying mins of a match – the media would rip said referee apart, not to mention the subsequent appeal that would take months and possibly damage the referee’s reputation.

Referees ‘that back down to the big clubs’ (i.e. a ‘good’ referee) will find it easier to deny a smaller or non-London club for that matter a match changing decision as the media don’t care about them so much so the backlash would not be as big and neither would the repercussions – hence better for the referee’s career. Until we can stop the media influence on football in this country (not sure how, free speech and all that) we will always have this problem and the people who do have the power to do something about it – i.e. referees, the FA chairmen, pundits, hacks etc won’t, so it will carry on and get worse and worse and worse.

This is just my theory from a fans point of view and is not written to vindicate anybody. However, as I stated above I just feel that referees do always favour the bigger clubs; there is simply too much evidence to assume otherwise. The club (Bolton Wanderers) should appeal against the ‘lack of action’ to the FA, if anything just to show that we are not pushovers, it probably wouldn’t amount to anything but may make Gallas realise that he is a cheat and we may get an apology (at best Gallas would get a ban).

As I stated above I am not directly questioning the integrity of Mr Wiley (however dubious), I am simply putting forward a theory that it is a large part of the media (mainly London based) who can influence referees decisions and make them think twice about making them.

Your views welcome in the comments below…

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Keeping it real, unless you're a journalist of course (via nimish gogri)

Football fans will ‘get real’ when journalists do too…

Disliking Bolton Wanderers has become default mode for most journalists and pundits these days. Their main problems with us are that we bullied Gary Megson out of a job and have ideas above our station when it comes to what we think our team should be capable of.

The first point has been covered at length on this site, but I will just link to a comment I left on this article, which repeated the misleading argument that results had nothing to do with Megson’s sacking. I added a bit of realism.

On the second, am I the only person who finds it incredibly ironic that Sky and the  newspapers, who have spent the last 15 years hyping the ‘promise land’ of the Premier League, are now telling us that we should ‘get real’?

When Sky start running adverts along the lines of “you’re welcome to watch Arsenal v Manchester United this weekend on Sky Sports. It will probably be really dull, with both teams cancelling each other out and not really trying to win the game, but we’ll do our best to make it interesting for you” instead of the usual “Super Sunday” and “clash of the century” bollocks, maybe then football fans will have some realism too.

Another irony is those in the media insisting we get real when they place such little value on realism in their own work. It’s not just Bolton either. When Roberto Mancini took over Mark Hughes’ job at Man City, Lee Dixon, a (probably) very well-paid (with your license fee) pundit was allowed to say (unchallenged) on Match of the Day that Mancini had not achieved anything more than Hughes in the game. How about a bit of realism, Lee? How about the three Serie A league titles that Mancini has won, Lee? How about the two Italian Cups and the fact he’s managed in the Champions League, Lee?

Another piece of journalism lacking realism was this piece in the Irish Independent about Owen Coyle’s appointment as Megson’s replacement. This line in particular got me:

Having scored 23 goals in 78 appearances for Bolton under Bruce Rioch between 1993 and 1995, Coyle’s recent billing as a club legend suggests a touch of revisionism at the Reebok.

Unlike most 21st century websites, the Irish Independent do not allow readers the privilege of correcting their mistakes via some kind of commenting system, so instead I had to write an email to the ‘letters to the editor’ section (what is this, 1999?). Here’s what I wrote:

This is a classic case of a journalist looking at facts and figures and failing to put them in any kind of context. Coyle’s importance to Bolton fans is not based on the number of goals he scored but on the importance of the ones he did. He was by no means prolific, in fact he was often a nervous finisher in front of goal, but somehow he had a knack for scoring goals in very important games, most notably in FA Cup ties against Everton and Arsenal in 1994.

These days, Bolton beating Everton and Arsenal in FA Cup ties may not seem that significant, but at the time we were a lower league team with fresh memories of being in Division Four only six years earlier. Furthermore, these FA Cup victories were symbolic of the rebirth of Bolton Wanderers from the doldrums of the 80s.

The mid-90s, when Bruce Rioch led us back to the top flight with two promotions in three years are remembered extremely fondly by all Bolton fans, not least because of the style with which these promotions were achieved. Pretty much every player who played during that period is considered to be something of a ‘legend’, regardless of the number of games played or goals scored.

Therefore there is no revisionism at the Reebok. The national media may have forgotten about Coyle’s association with Bolton in the intervening 16 years, but Bolton fans never did.

I trust you will publish this letter on your website so all your readers can have access to the full facts.

Watch this space to see if the Irish Independent ‘get real’.

Leave your views below. This isn’t the Irish Independent, so what you waiting for?

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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…

If you’d like to write for Manny Road see this.

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With the celebratory hangover now slowly healing, Manny Road would like to pay this tribute to former Bolton Wanderers manager (how good does that feel?) Gary Megson…

All the best for the future, Gary

And here’s what I told ESPN about the reasons for Gary Megson’s downfall and my hopes for the next manager (ideally either Mark Hughes or Owen Coyle). I also think that, for once, The Bolton News got it spot on with this assessment of Megson’s reign (having said that, their extensive list of articles on Megson’s dimissal reads suspiciously like the running schedule of Sky Sports News yesterday afternoon – new telly in the office for Christmas, lads?).

Feel free to leave your own tributes to Gary Megson below…

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Shot in the arm: Manny Road finds Gary Megson's secret formula

Gary Megson isn’t the only one to get a shot in the arm this week

I’m weak. It’s only been three-and-a-half weeks and I’ve already broken my two late-year resolutions. Regular readers will know that I gave up this blog after the Blackburn game and also vowed not to attend another Bolton Wanderers match until significant personnel changes were made in the dug-out department.

I was coaxed in to breaking the latter by a spare season ticket for the West Ham game on Tuesday night (full disclosure: I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially when the supporter in front of me called Megson every name under the sun for replacing Ivan Klasnic with Chris Basham, only to then sit down, turn to his companion and say: “I quite like Basham actually”).

With regards to the blog, I was touched by the comments left on my suicide note and by the several emails I received after hanging up my pen.

One of those emails has led to an exciting new opportunity – Manny Road is merging with our friends over at bwfcforum.co.uk, the Bolton Wanderers forum set up in response to the club’s ludicrous decision to close down the message board on bwfc.co.uk.

Exact details are yet to be finalised but watch this space as the two sites gradually integrate over the coming months.

The guys from the ‘official unofficial BWFC forum’ have convinced me to carry on writing on a sporadic basis (probably around once a month). As part of the merger we’re also going to open up Manny Road for any budding young writers, or old ones, who fancy trying their hand at a spot of blogging.

Ideally we’d like to recruit 5-10 writers to produce regular content. The posts are unpaid, but you’ll get full training in how to use the system and I guarantee you will learn loads about writing, blogging, interacting with your audience and how to use WordPress. You’ll be the talk of the town and be fighting the women off with a stick too… OK maybe not. But you will have full free freedom to express whatever opinions you like about Bolton Wanderers, regardless of whether Manny Road or BWFC Forum agree with you. We’ll even let you praise Gary Megson, if that kind of thing floats your boat.

If you’d like to get involved as a writer for Manny Road get in touch via the contact page here.

And for the less bold, why not head over to BWFC Forum and have your say there.

Pic: otisarchives4, some rights reserved.

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Will the last person to leave the Reebok Stadium please turn out the lights

Manny Road is officially going dark…

After a month of very little activity here on Manny Road, I’ve finally decided to put the blog on hold for a while.

I’ve been mulling this over for some time. Partly it’s motivated by factors in my own life: lack of time, an array of other projects to be getting on with, and the realisation that I’ve learnt pretty much everything I can from the Manny Road project – not least that you can’t make money from blogging; not about Bolton Wanderers anyway.

I was hoping that I’d be pushed over the edge by a revolution at the Reebok; by the removal of Gary Megson as manager. Yet despite a dismal run of results and a heartless display against Blackburn yesterday, it looks like the natural juncture for Manny Road to cease is still some way off – Megson is safe for some time yet, I fear.

In the end, it wasn’t the revolution that did for me, but rather, the lack of one. I won’t re-hash my objections to Megson today – I’ve already done so at length here, here, here and here – except to say that my obections are more about the way he conducts himself with supporters than the standard of football or the results. But the events of this weekend have led me to a difficult decision: I will not be spending any more money on Bolton Wanderers until Megson has been removed from office. Nor will I be writing another word about them either.

Put simply, Manny Road and other attempts by fans to vocalise discontent have failed. Megson is still there, and the cancer that he has brought to the club is now terminal. What struck me most about yesterday’s game, aside from the awful performance, was the atmosphere amongst supporters. It wasn’t the booing and the jeering that were shocking, but the lack of it. When it first got ugly against Megson at Spurs last season there was real emotion in the vitriol. Yesterday there was barely any emotion left; it was like watching the final desperate breaths of a soon-to-be corpse. Phil Gartside is about to learn that what comes after vitriol is apathy – and that’s much more dangerous.

What I saw yesterday was people (those that were there) looking increasingly resigned to the misery in front of them. People hating you might not feel great, but at least it shows they care. The chasm that now disconnects club and supporters, first opened up by the appointment of Megson, seems to get wider by the day. The club doesn’t listen to fans, it takes them for granted – and the only way to force change now is to turn our backs.

It runs deeper than just on-field performances. When I tried to buy a ticket for the game on Saturday afternoon the ticket office was closed. That’s right, the day before a big Lancashire derby, the club wouldn’t sell me a ticket. Is it any wonder the ground is half empty? Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, when most people are at work, the ticket office is open. On a Saturday afternoon, when Middlebrook is packed with shoppers wondering how they’re going to entertain themselves the next day, the ticket office is closed. That’s great business sense.

Eventually we handed over £56 for two tickets (on Sunday, when the ticket office was open, despite the sign outside saying it wouldn’t be). Inside the ground I then paid a further £1.70 for bottle of Coke, only to be told that I wasn’t allowed to have the bottle top because I ‘might hurt someone with it’. What other business, after taking nearly £60 of your money, proceeds to politely inform you that you look like the kind of person likely to commit GBH? Service with a smile! Except, in the words of Jarvis Cocker: ‘I don’t see anyone else smiling in here.’

The only thing likely to insight violence from me yesterday was Gary Megson’s continued tenure as our manager, and I’d need more than a plastic bottle top to committ that crime, believe me.

Except that violence solves nothing, so I’m joining the ranks of the disillusioned, apathetic Wanderers fans instead.

See you on the other side…

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Lee Chung-Yong’s goal from the Wanderers 3-2 victory over Everton at the Reebok Stadium today. More to follow…

Bolton Vs Everton Lee Chung Yong Goal!! – Funny home videos are a click away

Have your say on Bolton 3-2 Everton in the comment box below…

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Alex Ferguson goes in to hiding after hearing Gary Megson thinks they're mates now. Pic from tpower1978

The Bolton News falls for the United boss’ mind games

I Twittered last night about the appalling levels of hypocrisy on Five Live Sport, who went seamlessly from talking about how out of order football fans are for abusing players to then justifying Alex Ferguson’s abuse of referee Alan Wiley.

But Five Live aren’t the only ones who’ve swallowed Fergie’s spin.

This report in The Bolton News carried quotes from the Manchester United manager, lifted from his programme notes for Saturday’s game against the Wanderers, in which he said of Bolton fans:

You see the unreasonableness and impatience of fans expressed in many different ways and it’s all quite different from, say, 30 years, ago.

Would that be the same unreasonableness and impatience that prompts a manager to call in to question the professionalism of a referee?

Ferguson doesn’t give a toss about Megson or the Wanderers. When I worked on the Chelsea matchday programme, Jose Mourinho would often tailor his matchday notes to highlight weaknesses in the opposition – and thus wind them up when they got to the ground and read it.

Far from “launching an impassioned plea on behalf of Gary Megson”, as The Bolton News put it, Ferguson was merely stoking the fires of discontent to give his side an advantage – and The Bolton News fell for it.

More importantly, why is it OK for managers to publicly criticise referees and for players to blatantly swear at them on the pitch, but as soon as a fan dares criticise the people whose wages they pay, they are accused of bringing the game in to disrepute?

If anyone can explain this, there’s a comment box below…

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Goals from the Wanderers 2-1 defeat to United at Old Trafford today, although sadly minus Matt Taylor’s consolation for the time being (I’m working on it)…

View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Leave your views in the comment box below…

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