40 YEARS AGO

THERE was no official confirmation that any offer had been made but it was one of the worst kept secrets in football that Jimmy Armfield, who had left Bolton Wanderers to manage league champions Leeds United, wanted his former Burnden Park assistant Ian Greaves to join him at Elland Road.

In any event, Greaves had taken over as manager of Wanderers and made it clear to his Burnden bosses and the fans that he was staying.

He refused to confirm or deny whether Armfield had attempted to persuade him to join Leeds as assistant manager, but attempted to put an end to the speculation when he said: “I am on contract to Bolton Wanderers Football Club.

“That ties me to them and that’s the sort of person I am.

“Some people say that contracts are not worth the paper they are written on, but I don’t agree.”

Greaves had been manager for just four months and had still not put his personal stamp on the team he inherited from Armfield.

In fact, he was having a difficult time trying to keep Wanderers out of the bottom half of the table – a scoreless draw at home to promotion-chasing Norwich highlighting one of the main problems he would have to address before even thinking of making a push for the First Division.

Despite having far more of the play, they struggled to break down a water-tight Norwich defence, fashioned relatively few scoring chances and those they did manage to carve out were squandered.

The fans were disappointed to see front men Hugh Curran, John Byrom and Stuart Lee marked out of the game but there was a silver lining.

Earlier in the week financial pressures had prompted Wanderers to sell one of their best players, Don McAllister, to Tottenham for what the majority of supporters believed to be a paltry £80,000.

But McAllister’s departure opened the door for a young Sam Allardyce to make his mark – and he gave a taste of things to come with his no-nonsense defending and excursions into attack where he made his height and power felt at almost every set-piece.

As the Bolton Evening News football correspondent Frank Booth put it: “The biggest league crowd of the season must have been a little disappointed at the result – but they gave a vote of confidence to the club who were forced to sell one of their best players during the week and who replaced him with another who looks capable of hitting the high spots.”

15 YEARS AGO

WEMBLEY here we come! Bolton Wanderers booked themselves another date under the shadow of the twin towers with a thrilling victory over Charlton in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup.

A terrific angled striker from Eidur Gudjohnsen two minutes into the second half was enough to see off the Addicks and send the vast majority of a 20,000 Reebok crowd wild with delight as they looked forward to a semi-final duel with Aston Villa at the stadium where Bolton teams had lifted the FA Cup on four occasions.

But Wanderers had to do it the hard way, being down to 10 men for more than 40 minutes after full-back Dean Holden was sent off for an off-the-ball head-butt on Charlton’s John Robinson.

But less than a month after the humiliation of an abysmal performance at Tranmere where they were embarrassingly beaten in the semi-final of the Worthington Cup, Sam Allardyce’s Wanderers put in a performance bursting with pride and passion.

The only downside was that the club was still under financial pressures and the better the Bolton players played, the more likely it was that the asset strippers would come calling.

And Gudjohnsen was undoubtedly the most attractive product in the shop window.

The Iceland international, who had been rehabilitated by Wanderers after a broken ankle threatened to end his career and had already featured prominently in the pages of tabloid transfer speculation, was now even hotter property than ever.

But after firing in his 15th goal of the season, he insisted he was happy to ignore all the interest and the rumour while trying to repay the faith the club had shown him during his darkest days.

“I read the speculation in the papers the same as anybody does, but nobody has made contact,” he said.

“As a player you want to play at the highest possible level. But Bolton helped me to get over my injury and I am not rushing anywhere. I have still got a year on my contract.”

The 22-year-old striker destroyed Charlton’s club record 11-match winning run and had both managers – Allardyce and Charlton’s Alan Curbishley – and a national television audience drooling over his top-drawer skills, which once made him an equally impressive strike partner to the legendary Brazilian Ronaldo when he played at PSV Eindhoven as a 17-year-old.

Wanderers were bracing themselves for the offers that were sure to come flooding in – well in excess of the £3million offer they had also rejected from Derby.

But Big Sam was cool about the prospect of the likes of Sunderland and Liverpool, both believed to have been long-time admirers of Gudjohnsen, throwing their hats into the ring.

“I will worry about the thought of selling him when someone comes in and offers £10m,” he said.

“Eidur has only just started his first full season in competitive professional football at this level and he is only 22.

“He had an ankle break and some thought he might not come back from it. It took nine or 10 months to get him right and since then he has never looked back.”

10 YEARS AGO

BOLTON Wanderers maintained their twin-track approach to Europe when they beat Fulham to book their place in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup.

Kevin Davies was the hero of the hour, firing home the winning goal after just 11 minutes to extend Sam Allardyce’s Whites’ unbeaten run to 10 league and cup games.

But the fans, who were used to feasting on a diet of Premier League football, had still not contracted cup fever.

A Reebok crowd of just 16,000 – 10,000 down on the league average – saw Wanderers move to within two games of a second major final in successive seasons, having lost to Middlesbrough in the League Cup final a year earlier, despite the club slashing admission prices.

But Allardyce, who had developed a reputation for ringing the team changes in the early rounds of cup competitions , was not surprised.

"Bolton has always been like this,” he said. “It’s no different than it’s ever been.

“People get more excited now we’re in the quarter-final. They’ll cheer us on and egg us on to get to the semi-final and ultimately the final.”

But Fulham manager Chris Coleman questioned whether the FA Cup – a competition which had brought Wanderers their only major success – had lost its appeal.

“The size of the crowd has saddened me and surprised me,” Coleman said. “I hope it’s not been forgotten what the FA Cup is all about.”

The atmosphere inside the Reebok paled in comparison to that generated for Premier League games, not surprising considering Fulham’s notoriously poor away following.

But Allardyce himself didn’t do much to make the tie attractive, predictably resting first-team regulars including El-Hadji Diouf and Ivan Campo, although he said the lack of interest was because supporters found it difficult to budget for extra games.

“Every season-ticket holder – and we’ve got 21,000 – has to pay for his ticket and that’s a big reason,” he added.

“It’s not that people don’t want to watch the FA Cup. I think they do, but they just cannot afford it.”

Wanderers chairman Phil Gartside, meanwhile, was so confident of qualifying for Europe that he set Allardyce a new target.

“We’ve set ourselves a target of qualifying for Europe three years in a row,” the Reebok chief said, confirming his ambitious "reach for the sky" philosophy.