Bert Tyldesley followed the fortunes of Bolton Wanderers through eight decades and kept a diary of his time in the terraces. With the kind permission of his family, we bring you his reflections on that journal, entitled: 75 Years a Wandering.

The Bolton News:

The league season had meandered in a negative, desultory kind of way for the Wanderers in 1993/94 but success in the FA Cup most certainly prevented it from becoming a chore.

December had seen a 2-0 away win at Oxford United, courtesy of goals from Tony Kelly and Alan Thompson, sandwiched between three 1-1 and two 0-0 draws.

Some of those results had been played out in front of empty terraces at places like Ascoli in the Anglo Italian Cup – a nonsensical competition that we could all have done without.

By the turn of the year we said goodbye to Julian Darby, for long the only Bolton lad in the squad before the return of Jimmy Phillips. Julian went to re-join his old Burnden Park boss Phil Neal at Coventry City in the Premier League after making 270 league appearances for his hometown team.

Strange, we thought, that a player who had been considered no more than a journeyman footballer, who had certainly been the butt of the boo-boys at Burnden, was, after two or three months at the highest level, holding his own without apparent difficulty. Well done, Julian, it just goes to show there is no accounting for taste!

An in-comer, if only temporarily, was Robert Fleck, the Scotland international on loan from Chelsea, whose tenure lasted just seven games and yielded a single goal. The latter was achieved on the first day of 1994 when he joined Scott Green, Thompson and a hapless opponent in putting four past Notts County. The final start was not maintained a few days later when Bolton went down 1-0 at Wolves.

We had not expected much at Molineux, thanks to the ‘Big One’ happening the following Saturday, January 8, 1994, when Everton – complete with their debutant silver-haired manager, Mike Walker, poached from Norwich that week – would arrive with a large contingent of supporters to put these Lancastrian pretenders in their place.

How that large travelling fanbase cheered their manager that day, and how quickly those cheers turned to boos. Within a year Mike had disappeared from the Goodison scene. It really is a funny game, football.

Everton nudged ahead in a first half of no particular distinction, with neither side imposing its authority, through a Paul Rideout shot.

Truth to tell, Everton held their lead for just three minutes. Mark Patterson, just two minutes after the half time interval, turned in a rebound after Paul Holmes had mis-kicked a clearance on to his own crossbar.

Thereafter Bolton really did turn up the heat but despite the wheezing and whooping of the Geriatric Shelf, where I resided, and the vociferous backing of the home supporters, they could not find the winning goal their football deserved.

The Bolton News:

The faithful were not disheartened in the view of the previous year’s events at Anfield and even though some of us on the Geriatric Shelf could not believe that lightning would strike twice, it most certainly did. I saw it on telly!

Not that it seemed possible a minute after half time at Goodison Park when 34,642 spectators, including a fair smattering from Bolton, saw Stuart Barlow add his second goal of the game to give Everton a seemingly impregnable two-goal lead. The Toffeemen were certainly cock-a-hoop – as were their supporters – and obviously in the mood to ram home their advantage.

But cometh the hour, cometh the man, as they say, and usually in Wanderers’ case that man was John McGinlay. And so, just six minutes after Barlow had set the Toffees on the road to glory, McGinlay, never one to give up the struggle, latched on to a David Lee cross and gave Bolton a semblance of hope.

Wanderers responded with verve and it was no surprise when seven minutes from full time and against an increasingly shaky Everton defence, they levelled the game.

Gary Ablett and the usually rock-solid Neville Southall confused themselves so much that Alan Stubbs was able to nip in and put away the loose ball from 10 yards.

Extra time was only one way – Bolton’s. Ten minutes in Owen Coyle latched on to a ball from Jason McAteer and after taking it forward despatched a wonderful left-footed winner.

My son, Mike, had predicted a good cup run and league consolidation, and was not shy to tell me so. Not that consolidation ran smoothly in January, with a marginal improvement in form – three wins against two defeats – which was not sufficient to push towards the play-off places. It did, however, insure against the mental and physical energy needed against our next cup opponents… No less than George Graham’s Arsenal, who had not been beaten in the FA Cup since 1992.