Bolton Wanderers fan column - Portsmouth crunch match

Football: It is nothing but a cruel game, constantly playing with your emotions and touching every raw nerve. Twists and turns aplenty, with this current League One campaign still firmly up for grabs.

Well, maybe not top spot, as Saturday’s visitors Portsmouth are all but promoted, barring a collapse of epic proportions.

The fight has been for second place and has been for over a month now. I wrote a few weeks ago after the defeat to Derby County that the fat lady was warming up her vocal cords and heading down to Pride Park, but she obviously did not receive the memo did she?

Maybe we can thank Corey Blackett-Taylor for missing a guilt edge chance for Derby on Wednesday night, but a special shoutout must also go to Wycombe Wanderers for doing us a massive favour and placing the ball back in Bolton’s court.

Now we are in the final game of the fifth set and Ian Evatt’s men are serving for the match. All that is required are four aces, but the schedule in front of Bolton is more Novak Djokovic than Franco Egea (currently ranked 900th in the world).

I have no idea how that turned into a reference regarding tennis, but this is what football - and more specifically Bolton Wanderers - do to me. They are no good for my mental health, but I would not have it any other way.

Let me be clear, there is no time for celebrating, because nothing has been achieved. As Kobe Bryant once said - “What is there to be happy about? Job’s not finished.”

Evatt will ensure the players have that notion drilled into them, because it does not get tougher than facing the league leaders, even at home. You just hope the capacity crowd can spur the players on and to just take it one game at a time.

I am not the guy to be dishing out motivational speeches. The players know what needs to be done, they have got this far and may have received some luck along the way, but results have gone their way and they control their own destiny once more.

Forget the drop in form since the new year, just maintain the consistency the squad have enjoyed over the last few games. Bolton are undoubtedly a better team at home and the statistics back that line of thinking up, so with three of their last four games to be played at the Toughsheet Stadium, that is a welcome sight.

Nathan Baxter is back and that alone is worth the price of admission. He was outstanding against Bristol Rovers and made some crucial saves at 0-0. Ricardo Santos and Josh Sheehan are also fit, Dion Charles is likely to be in the matchday squad and it could not come at a better time.

Are the stars aligning? Who knows. But you have seen the image of Bruce Rioch knocking about on social media with the impassioned speech about the backing from the crowd and it gets you ready to go, doesn’t it?

This is it now, the final stretch. We will do our job in the stands, because that is not a question.

The players will be ready. We have full faith that they can get us over the line.

This is it now, this is the time.

It all comes flooding back

by Tony Thompson

“When you get to a certain age, there is no coming back” – Brian Clough said that.

I think I have reached the age now where the more football modernises, the less it seems to make sense to me.

The data, the endless statistics, the continual rows over finances and fair play, Super Leagues and regulators. Maybe Bill Shankly was right? Maybe the idiots really are over-complicating The Beautiful Game?

Sometimes I’ll watch a match on TV and hardly recognise what I’m watching. It looks vaguely like the stuff I saw on my tiptoes at Burnden Park when I was a lad but somehow slower and more synthetic. Put it this way, I don’t think there is an inch of the Emirates where you could smell Wintergreen or woodbine.

And sometimes, even this season, I have wondered: Why do I bother?

You get older and other things matter more – family, work, the great outdoors, a pint in the pub.

And then a game comes along like the one against Portsmouth on Saturday and by lunchtime the synapses will fire up again, the goosebumps will tingle, the memories will come flooding back, and I’ll be 12 years old again, walking up the road to see the Super Whites. The transformation is incredible.

Some words from Bruce Rioch had the same effect the other day when I read them on Facebook, the man could probably read the phone book aloud and I’d be willing to run through a brick wall for him.

It is a crying shame that the club has never found a way to recognise what he and Colin Todd did for Bolton Wanderers in the nineties, an ambassadorial title that just acknowledges what they did to turn us around and give some of us the best years spent watching our team.

I hope there are younger fans taking that same enjoyment now. If we can beat Portsmouth, it will be a result I think will be talked about for years to come.

Cloughie was right, time waits for nobody. Bruce is 76 now, Todd 75, and I’m creeping ever closer to 60, but hopefully we all have time to see the Wanderers get back to where they deserve to be.