AARON Collins is looking forward to getting a “fresh start” with Wanderers next season, unimpeded by talk of play-off failure.
Bolton’s top-scorer and player of the year accepts an eighth-placed finish in League One was nowhere near acceptable considering the targets which had been set by the squad last summer.
The Welshman admits the after-effects of Wembley, and the defeat to Oxford, had more widespread and lasting consequences across the club than he could have imagined. And though he hadn’t been harmed massively by the result – fresh at the time from Bristol Rovers – he has gradually realised through the course of the current campaign how much it had impacted on team-mates and staff.
Collins is now excited at the prospect of starting again under Steven Schumacher, with no such ‘baggage’ with which to contend.
“For me, individually, I only came into it for the last three months, so I couldn’t fully assess what was happening at the time, where we were at,” he said. “It was what it was, there were injuries, we just missed out on the automatics, but I still felt like going to Wembley was a massive opportunity, I couldn’t wait.
“This year, I have had the time with the lads, I have been able to assess the whole season. And it has been really frustrating - I’ll hold up my hands it hasn’t been good enough. Everyone has picked up on that.
“But next season once we get back it’s a fresh start and a new mindset, new players coming in adding to the ones who have been here, and we’ll go again.”
Schumacher has already shipped out three squad mainstays in Nathan Baxter, Gethin Jones and Ricardo Santos and is likely to clear more space for new signings this summer.
Collins will be glued to the gossip columns over the coming weeks once the transfer window opens to see what the club has in store for another promotion assault.
“What will happen, will happen, I don’t know,” he said. “We have got a new manager and I’m sure the owners will back him, so you just don’t know who is going to be here at the start of the season, that’s the truth of it.
“It’s exciting for players, it’s exciting for the fans. We know this season the team hasn’t been good enough, individually we know we didn’t do it, so now it’s the time to wait and see who the gaffer brings in.
“I’m sure we can come in positive after that. We can clear away the whole ‘not getting promoted at Wembley thing’ – that is gone, done and dusted. It was a bad season.
“But it is a fresh start and all I can do is concentrate on getting goals, getting assists and getting promotions.”
Asked what must be done to turn Wanderers into automatic promotion challengers again, Collins felt the improvement needed to come in “both boxes”.
“The talent is there,” he said. “I think everyone who has been brought to the club has the ability to get promoted and get into the Championship but collectively something hasn’t been there, and that’s the consistency.
“We need something more in the team. We haven’t scored enough goals or kept enough clean sheets. That is a whole team scenario. If we change that, then I think we can go and get promotion.”
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