IT’S been a decade since Phil Gartside famously claimed Wanderers will have achieved success by being a ‘yo-yo’ club that flirts between the Premier League and the Championship for the foreseeable future – but how happy he is to have been proved completely wrong.

When Sam Allardyce guided the Whites back into the big time with a memorable play-off victory over Preston North End, the chairman’s caution was perhaps understandable.

Having twice dabbled in the top flight before, only to be relegated after just one season, it would have been folly to start bragging about a bright new dawn. But that’s exactly what it proved to be.

The unfashionable club – often dubbed ‘Little Old Bolton’ by Big Sam himself – did go on to dine at the top table for 10 consecutive years, twice qualifying for Europe, and attracting footballers with world pedigree, such as Youri Djorkaeff, Jay Jay Okocha, Nicolas Anelka and Fernando Hierro.

Wanderers have survived the turbulent times too.

Allardyce’s side scrapped to keep their heads above water in the early years before striding on to unparalleled success, and it was only the enterprising manager’s shock departure in April 2007 that threatened to set the club back on its heels.

Gary Megson picked up the reins after Sammy Lee’s short and unsuccessful stint at the helm, and while his two-and-ahalf years may forever be remembered for his tempestuous relationship with the supporters, and a functional style of football, it did at least ensure that Owen Coyle inherited a squad still capable of fighting their way to survival.

The former Burnden Park favourite has rejuvenated the flagging atmosphere and produced a brand of football more pleasing on the eye, resulting in an upturn in crowds at the Reebok for two consecutive seasons.

Looking back on Wanderers’ Premier League milestone, Gartside admits the club now feel comfortable among the elite.

“Our model when we came up here was Charlton Athletic,” he said. “They had risen from the ashes really, gone back to the Valley, brought in a young manager in Alan Curbishley and got into the top flight.

“How many years did they survive? By the end of January they had got their 40 points and then went to sleep but as a model they were fantastic.

“When Curbishley went, it affected them in the same way Sam leaving affected us. They didn’t get over it. We could have ended up like that.

“But having got over that, we feel now that we’re an established Premier League team.

“You never say never but we’d have to do something pretty wrong to fall out at this stage.

“The way the finances go, the first season you come up, everyone runs on adrenaline. It’s exciting, especially if you’ve never been there, or not for a long time. The atmosphere you get is your 12th man.

“When you have been there a while the effect wears away a little and you have to get it from your coaching, or the acquisitions you make. We’ve got to that point now where it’s not major change you want every year, it’s a gradual evolution.”

Having seen Wanderers plumb the depths of the Football League and come close to going out of existence altogether, a lifelong supporter like Gartside is qualified to take the wider view.

Four different men may have managed the club during the latest run in the top flight, but the chairman believes the catalyst for the current success came a few years before promotion, with the controversial decision to quit the club’s home of more than a century at Burnden Park.

“The real sea change for me at Bolton was the building of the Reebok,” he said.

“Bruce Rioch had proved to everyone that we could be a proper team again after we’d slumped all the way down to the fourth division and had some really dark times.

“To move into that new facility and reinvent what Bolton Wanderers meant after Burnden was a huge transition. Sam came off the back of that. His task was to establish us as a Premier League team and there’s no doubt he did that with a flourish.

“We became known for a certain style and for being a team that was tough to play against, and when he left there was a lot of questions. Do we stick with the same style? Do we try and recreate another Sam or another Bolton Wanderers?

“You can only do that with a style that the incoming manager wants to play and I think we did that too early with Sammy and it didn’t work out.

“Gary then stabilised what was a poor situation. He never got the credit for that, unfortunately.

“In the end, when we changed to Owen, one of the reasons he was attractive is that he had these different ideas. He’s now established himself within 18 months, in his first full season as a Premier League manager.

“His own personality has been transferred to everyone around the club. It’s all about that positive attitude.”

With Coyle in charge, Gartside firmly believes Wanderers have a manager able to stamp his mark on the club just as effectively as Allardyce did in his seven-and-ahalf year reign.

Although an air of disenchantment hangs around after a poor finish to the season, and a best forgotten FA Cup semifinal defeat against Stoke City, the winds of change are currently blowing up at Winter Hill.

Coyle has already released five players this week, with more departures expected in the next couple of months.

But Gartside agrees that the current manager’s rebuilding job is being done on a firm base, and one laid a decade ago by Allardyce.

“If you look back now, since I became chairman in 1999, Sam took up half of that time but that wasn’t all in the Premier League,” he said.

“Sam built a team over two years to get into the Premier League and then spent the next five up there. The success we had was phenomenal.

“Establishing Bolton over a period as a Premier League team and to have survived for 10 years is an achievement in itself for us.

“The job Sam did and the one Owen is doing currently are totally different. Owen has come into an established team so he has got to build on that. The expectations are much, much higher.

“To establish the base, which Sam did, was fantastic. He’s left that legacy to build on, and it’s a big task.

“The market has changed. Sam’s success was built around bringing in established players and then trying to mould them into a team.

“Owen has chosen to do it a different way. He has chosen to bring in younger players who he feels he can mould into better players.

“His style is different – not better or worse – it’s just different, and he’s now got to find different players who he can bring into his style of play.

“We’re very much in transition.

His plan now is to bring in quality to the ones he’s got.

“If players leave this club it’ll be for Owen’s reasons, nobody else’s. If they choose to leave, that’s their prerogative. He will have already mapped out and planned how he wants to move on.”