BEN Chief Football Writer Gordon Sharrock charts the fluctuating fortunes of Sam Allardyce, the manager who took his side to the brink og cup and league glory last season only to find himself having to rebuild a squad after the departure of his top stars. SAM Allardyce is under no illusions. After turning a season that promised nothing into a season that almost delivered everything, the Wanderers boss knows he has a massive job on his hands.

Long before he flew home early from the club's American tour in a desperate bid to shore up his injury stricken squad, he had gone on record as saying he did not think his team would be any better than last year's; he didn't go so far as to suggest it would be worse but that was the general impression.

It's a characteristically honest assessment from a man who, as a player and now as a manager, has never tried to pull the wool over anyone's eyes.

And it is in that respect that we can expect the man, still affectionately known as Big Sam, to accept the challenge that lies ahead with the sort of passionate, positive and no-nonsense approach that was typical of his performances when he pulled on the white shirt in the Seventies. It won't be easy though.

Face the facts: Five members of the team that performed so valiantly in the play-offs are gone; they have been replaced by an equal number of summer recruits but - and time will tell on this score - not, on the face of it, by players of equal standard.

Add to that the legacy of the Portman Road debacle plus a crop of pre-season injuries which will rob him of key players for the opening games of the new season and it's not surprising that the manager decided he would be better employed back at the Reebok rather than on the other side of the Atlantic.

Wanderers will miss Eidur Gudjohnsen and Claus Jensen - there is no doubt about that - and they will miss Michael Johansen.

The young Icelander's goals were a major feature of last season's success and all the signs point to him developing into an even more formidable force.

The two Danes were key players in a midfield that was respected throughout the division. And, although Bolton fans realised from the start that Paul Ritchie and Allan Johnston were only temporary acquisitions as they waited for their summer moves to Rangers, the two Scots were major influences in the second half of the campaign.

In each case they were lost as a result of the club's financial situation: £4 million offers for Gudjohnsen and Jensen proving too tempting for a plc so deeply in the red; Johansen feeling he had no choice but to secure a return to Denmark because he could not get the assurances he needed at the Reebok; and Johnston and Ritchie, however impressed they might have been with the set-up, knew they couldn't hope to match what was on the table in Glasgow.

Wanderers made no secret of the necessity to sell players but it has to be said that the supporters didn't know the full story and certainly didn't expect to see two of their brightest stars sold in quick succession when they responded so enthusiastically to the season ticket sales drive!

Those 8,500 optimists who, on the strength of last season's three near-misses, were confident Wanderers could mount another prmotion bid were understandably dismayed.

A clutch of free transfers - Anthony Barness, Simon Charlton and Leam Richardson - and a modest investment (around £250,000 I believe) in a young striker with potential - Michael Ricketts - was little compensation for what had been lost.

But the re-signing of Per Frandsen, 10 months after his controversial transfer to Blackburn, has certainly cushioned the blow and raised hopes that Wanderers can make an impression in the race for the Premiership.

That is what the supporters expect and that is what the team must be looking to deliver, whatever their handicaps.

It will be a tough start with Mike Whitlow suspended for three matches and Robbie Elliott one as a consequence of their folly and referee Barry Knight's aberrations in the play-off defeat at Ipswich while Ricketts carries over a three-match ban from a red card he picked up playing for Walsall Reserves.

Dean Holdsworth will be lucky if he's available for the early games and Jimmy Phillips, one of the old guard Allardyce is relying on to provide stability and experience, is nursing a knee injury - both legacies of a pre-season that could have been kinder, to say the least.

It has not been all doom and gloom though and there have been plus points to emerge over the five weeks since the players resumed training after their all-too-brief summer lay-off.

Jussi Jaaskelainen (knee) and Robbie Elliott (groin) showed in the States that they have recovered from summer surgery and Ricardo Gardner raced ahead of the pack in the sprints to confirm that he is well ahead of schedule in his recovery from reconstructive surgery on his badly damaged knee.

And given the way Barness and Charlton - both accomplished defenders with experience at the highest level - and Richardson and Ricketts were integrated into the squad, Allardyce can be content in the knowledge that he still has the makings, if not the greatest depth in his squad, after raising a small fortune for his paymasters.