I’m by no means a statto, and I don’t mind a bet, but I, like every other Bolton fan could see the sort of performance which was coming from our opponents today. The usual pathetic time wasting and gamesmanship. I was spot on, writes John Nuttall.

I don’t begrudge this in many ways, as teams know they cannot compete with us by playing football, so I accept that they have to try different, sometimes questionable and frustrating tactics, but it has gone way beyond a joke. Our division is split effectively into two tiers: the top eight or so, and the rest. Whenever any of the second tier of league 1 turn up, we see the same old dross. So much so that today, I decided, sad though it may be in many people’s eyes, to take a stopwatch and time the amount of stoppages inflicted by our opposition.

We’ve all come to be experts on ridiculous time wasting which goes totally unpunished by weak third tier officials. With all of the VAR, fourth officials and others required in the top two tiers, I feel the level of officiating has plummeted in our league.

Every week we see things such as: the keeper taking the ball to the other side of the box, 20-40 seconds per goal kick/corner/throw in, leaving the ball for another player when you are ready to take the kick, tapping the ball just in front of you two yards to then have to get it and walk back to where you were 10 seconds previously, walking 10 yards past the correct position of the throw in before being warned by the official, gesticulating in surprise and then taking the throw anyway, literally standing there with the ball in hand staring at the ref and waiting for him to tell you to get on with it, not to mention the nonsense around injuries and subs, the keeper kicking the post, running to the corner to get the ball, pretending he can’t find the ball behind the ad boards, running away with the ball when it’s our kick, even pushing a ball boy today etc etc etc.

Farcical and generally unpunished.

Are we fans the only people who see this? Are the referees so ignorant or surprised by this every week?

I do wonder what on earth Peter Walton, Howard Webb et al discuss with other officials, because, never mind VAR, this is the scourge of the modern game.

With most of the nonsense listed above on display, I recorded the time which it took for Cheltenham to return the ball to play today.

This essentially included every time the ball went out for a Cheltenham ball or any “injury” or any other obvious time wasting which occurred. I timed up until the 45 minute mark (not additional time because I felt time wasting in time added would skew the figures) and up until we scored after 79 minutes 56 seconds. The total time which Cheltenham wasted, was, according to my, not flawless, but pretty accurate timings 24 minutes 17 seconds.

Ludicrous.

This means that around 30 per cent of the contest up until this point was spent literally waiting for Cheltenham to return the ball to play. When going watching Bolton, my first concern is, are we going to win…but I do go with the hope of being entertained as well, and this generally does not happen anymore when lower teams come to town.

Despite all this, in years past we would have lost games to the likes of Cheltenham and been caught on the break or given a penalty away etc. All credit goes to Ian Evatt and the team for putting up with this and coming through it, as once again, only one team had any interest in winning today. I don’t see any reason we can’t win the EFL trophy and gain promotion this year when we can grind this kind of result out and with the two new signings, we even have half a chance against the top four in my opinion.

Maybe at some point, and with some attention from the EFL, if this kind of nonsense which we witnessed today is highlighted a little more, we may get some better games down at The UniBol. Here’s hoping, but at least we won.