ALEX Baptiste reckons tying Ricardo Santos down to a longer contract is already the best summer signing that Wanderers could have made.

Wanderers put to bed months of speculation over the club captain by announcing he had signed a new three-year deal at the end of last month.

Baptiste – who will leave the club this summer after two years playing alongside Santos – believes the big centre-half can lead Bolton closer to the automatic promotions spots this season.

“As soon as I saw Rico had got his contract I texted him right away to congratulate him because he deserves it,” he told The Bolton News.

“He is not just a good player on the pitch, he’s a great person off it as well.

“Honestly, it is madness how it hadn’t quite worked for him before he came to Bolton. I will never know why he wasn’t playing at a higher level earlier.

“For me Bolton have already made their best signing of the summer, that’s how good I think he is.

“Playing the way the gaffer wants us to play you can’t do it with a normal defender. When you are one-v-one and they attack, a regular bloke just gets eaten up.

“We sat and watched him on the bench last season and when someone tries to race him, we knew what was coming. It’s hilarious.

“He is the type of player you need if you want to be successful. And I think Bolton will be OK next season.”

Baptiste proved a big influence for Santos, especially in his early says in League Two, and the 36-year-old rates him alongside the finest centre-halves he has worked with in a career spanning nearly 20 years.

“If I have helped him even a little bit, it’s my pleasure,” he said. “The run we went on, all those clean sheets at the end of the promotion season, that made me proud. And if that is my last proper season in football then it’s a great way to bow out.

“I can honestly say he is one of the best defensive partners I have ever had – and I have played with some very, very good players down the years, so that is a big compliment.”

Baptiste returned to Bolton in the summer of 2020 after an unhappy first spell under Dougie Freedman between 2013 and 2015, some of which was spent out on loan with Blackburn Rovers.

He returned to play for ex-Blackpool team-mate Ian Evatt to little fanfare but proved to be a key figure on and off the pitch over the last two seasons.

Could he have envisaged enjoying his second spell so much, after the ignominy of the first?

“Not in a million years,” he laughed.

“There was a time I hated Bolton Wanderers. It was the worst year of my life.

“I don’t mean hate the fans – but on the pitch, off it, there was so much going wrong, personally, even when I was on loan with Blackburn I’d be hoping teams would beat them because everything associated with Bolton Wanderers felt like heartbreak.

“It was the first time in my whole career that I thought to myself ‘is football really worth it?’ I just didn’t like going into work.

“Then to come back… To be able to do that with my friends made me proud. It was the maddest season, to come back from the start we’d made, keep all the clean sheets and won on the final day. You know, you were there, but it was one of the best runs I’ve ever had as a player.

“The club was nearly out of business. It was nowhere near where it was when I first played there. And then it maybe had to hit rock bottom before the gaffer, Sharon and the directors could build it properly up again.

“So, if in years to come I can say I put a brick back in place to build Bolton up to where they should be, then I am a happy man.”