NO doubt I will waste a lot of words in the months to come dissecting the mistakes and issues which have contributed to a season of underachievement at Wanderers, but before the inquest begins, a thankyou to one of our own.
From boardroom to bootroom, the failure to get close to the pre-season target of automatic promotion is a shared one. Nobody escapes the finger of blame.
There are serious matters to be discussed this summer as Steven Schumacher starts to deconstruct the club and a team built in another man’s image. And those in leadership positions must reflect on how the biggest budget ever assembled has resulted in arguably the most disappointing season since Football Ventures took on the club.
But before we wade into the transfer mis-steps, the never-ending injuries and decisions that could, and should, have been made earlier, let’s stop to thank one chap at Wanderers who has been flipping brilliant all the way through.
Julian Darby was asked to take interim charge at Bolton at a time when season ticket holders were outright refusing to take their seat for games.
Regardless of how you viewed the job done by Ian Evatt, even his most ardent supporter would agree that the environment had turned suitably toxic as to prevent any chance of progression.
Should it have come to that? We’ll that is a discussion for another time. Darby was faced with a group of players whose confidence levels were low, but in this reporter’s opinion at least, some of them had hidden behind the vitriol, directed largely at the manager. They had bailed on Evatt a long time before he walked out the door.
Nevertheless, the two games against Huddersfield and Northampton proved that a simplified gameplan, not a philosophy or an ethos, could get something more out of a team that had previously being buckling under the weight of information.
Darby’s passion for the club came through with every word. And the image of him taking his young grandson to the away fans at the John Smiths Stadium is enough to raise a smile for eve the most cynical Wanderers supporter.
Under Evatt, Bolton had taken themselves too seriously. The brand, the identity, the choice to double down on 3-5-2 after the crushing defeat at home to Huddersfield back in September, it had all created an unnecessary pressure. In just a couple of weeks, Darby’s gentle cajoling and trust in the players’ ability seemed to have unlocked something for the next man in charge.
Schumacher deserves his chance to rebrand this summer and strikes you as a man who knows what he wants. There is every reason to believe that next season’s Bolton Wanderers will be a different prospect, leaner and meaner, and though things have not panned out as he would have liked since February, the situation could have been worse without the six points Darby put on the board in his caretaker spell.
You sensed once his first team duties were through, that Darby was quite pleased to return to the touchline for the youth team, no longer mithered for selfies quite so often on a weekend tip run, or queuing for a coffee on Middlebrook.
His team would have wrapped up the league and cup double weeks ago had Schumacher not needed to fast-track several key players into the senior squad to make up the numbers.
You do not need to be an expert in paralinguistics or body language to sense the head coach’s frustrations when discussing how many of his players have either been declared, or declared themselves, unable to play in the last couple of weeks.
All the while, teenagers who have racked up 60 games this season were turning out for the Under-19s and the B Team on the same day earlier this week. Some of those youngsters will gladly do so again this weekend, thrilled by the opportunity of pulling on a Wanderers shirt at the Toughsheet against Stevenage, if only for a single minute.
That pride is priceless. It is there each and every time Darby discusses the club he supported as a boy and played for through the majority of his career. And that passion has been passed on to teams he has coached at the academy.
It would be grossly unfair to say that all the senior players who line-up against Stevenage today do not have the same desire, or that at least some of the injured list would much rather be out on the pitch than sat on the sidelines.
But do some of this well-paid, well-resourced squad have the same fire in their belly? I think we all know the answer to that.
If nothing else, Jules and his double winning team have issued some important reminders on what it means to represent Bolton Wanderers and why success does not always have to be complicated.
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