GARY Megson’s managerial reign at Bolton started with a 1-1 draw at home to Villa. Eighteen months on and the same result against the same team might make you wonder what progress BWFC have made. The answer is decidedly mixed.

On the positive side, and quoting cold facts, we stayed up last season when all seemed lost despite the departure of Anelka and, with this result, one win from the last four games should see us safe.

Not too bad when Bolton are the club with the least revenue in the Premiership — more or less.

Megson, on the whole, can spot the obvious, eventually, and will ship out someone who is badly letting the team down, and his signings have mostly been good.

On the negative side, the bigger picture is more worrying.

Megson’s intelligence seems to come from the accumulation of the obvious knocking him over rather than him having an innate genius or vision.

Our team selection and approach to games seem often directionless, and most damning is his lack of understanding of basic psychology which means that when he thinks the team will probably lose a game he does not demand the maximum from the players.

As a boss you get what you say is acceptable. Ahead of the Villa game the noises were all about needing something from it, which resulted in a decent fightback in a dour game which was slipping away from us.

Before the games against Chelsea, Portsmouth, Everton, Stoke away and Fulham at home there was nothing of the sort, and look what happened.

How many times have we just not turned up and spent the whole game defending, and ultimately losing tamely? This should never really happen — it never used to — and Megson does not really understand that it’s his attitude pre-match that’s the main cause.

Megson’s other main flaw is his innate defensiveness. I do seriously worry that he does not understand the basic need for a team to have an attacking intent in every game.

His standard response to any dilemma is to play it safe until deep in the mire when it’s then all guns blazing. Being defensive only makes the opposition take a more aggressive posture and makes defeat inevitable.

I spend my Saturdays worrying where the attacking players are. This week Ricardo Gardner was singled out by Megson as the most important midfield attacker, but for long periods this season he wouldn’t pick him.

We desperately need more midfield attacking options in the summer and the squad is far too small. We have been one major injury away from meltdown all season. Lucky.

In fact, lucky, rather than great, sums up our season. Surely we’ll not be lucky next season so come on Megson, be more demanding and more attacking and you can unleash once again the Wanderers’ built-in desire to be better than we should be.