FOR the first time since the uncertain days of Covid, Project Restart and Kitchen Discos, Bolton Wanderers found themselves without a manager.
Ian Evatt had built a squad to his blueprint over four-and-a-half years and had been given licence to spend seven figures on Joel Randall less than a fortnight before the walked out of the doors for good.
His relationship with the Bolton fans had deteriorated to the point that separation felt inevitable, yet with half a season left to run there was no time to navel gaze. Wanderers needed to make some good decisions, fast.
With Evatt’s right-hand men Matt Gilks, Stephen Crainey and Pete Atherton also gone, the Whites turned to one of their own to take interim charge.
Julian Darby had 40 years earlier turned professional with his hometown club and had already lived the boyhood dream of progressing through the system to play more than 300 games for the club between 1986 and 1995. Now in charge of the Under-18s – themselves in the midst of a successful campaign – ‘Jules’ was asked to step up, with B Team coaches Andy Taylor and Andy Tutte for company.
CHAPTERS
- Post-Wembley discussion paves the way for a rocky season at Bolton Wanderers
- Brand Evatt comes under fire as Wanderers' season takes turn for the worse
- Wanderers season review part three: Stockport, Wigan, and a manager on the edge
- Inconsistency rules as Evatt's spell at Bolton Wanderers boss comes to an end
Other than calling Szabi Schon by completely the wrong name in his first training session and having his regular routines around the town being slowed by continual requests for selfies and a chat, Darby could not have asked for a better time as interim boss.
Bolton had appointed someone who knew a thing or two about playing under supporter pressure, and the 57-year-old was happy to admit he struggled with the boo-boys in the grim days of Burnden Park in the late eighties.
But his message to the group he now had to lead into battle at Huddersfield was a simple one: “Just go and prove them all wrong!”
“Listen, everything isn’t always sweet and rosy,” he said. “You are going to hve times when things are stacked against you and the mental strength has to come through.
“Did I have a bad time back then? Yes I did. Was I playing well? No, I wasn’t really, no. But Phil Neal had seen something in me and kept playing me and playing me. Was it hard? It was really hard at the time.
“I’m so pleased there was no social media back then. There were just letters in the Bolton Evening News that Gordon Sharrock used to put in!
“Times have changed but you still have to get on with it. You need the mental strength and to think: ‘Right, I’m going to prove these people wrong!”
A team which had buckled under the weight of pressure looked a totally different prospect in West Yorkshire. Darby’s simplified plan won’t necessarily get its own Tifo but it brought something we had not seen from the players involved for some time.
Dion Charles – who had been sold by Bolton for £700,000 after leading the club’s scoring charts for the previous three campaigns – was completely ineffectual and teased mercilessly by the away fans behind the goal.
Though Michael Duff would bizarrely claim Aaron Collins’s 55th minute winner had made it a “smash and grab” affair, his own team hadn’t put a shot on target for three quarters of the match and despite splashing out on some big signings, they too were watching promotion hopes vanish down the plughole.
“Sideways and backwards, not anymore!” rejoiced the away fans, still throwing jibes at the former manager and thoroughly enjoying their afternoon in the winter sun. But once the final whistle went, centre stage belonged to Darby, and more accurately, to his two-year-old grandson, Bobby, who stared up at the commotion without a care in the world.
From the toxicity on the terraces during the final weeks under Ian Evatt, harmony had been restored. The interim manager had provided a unifying moment with the win at Huddersfield and as he assessed the game, his words formed a perfect job-specification for the board, who were interviewing candidates to take the role full-time.
“You roll your sleeves up, that’s all the supporters are after,” he said. “You might win, you might lose a couple, but they are all asking for 100 per cent, and that’s what I said to the players.
“You wear the shirt and that badge with flipping pride. You go and win your tackles because you are tough Northerners and it’s what we do.
“Every one of them did that and I can’t praise them enough.”
The Darby Party would have to run a little longer than initially planned, and no sooner had he got his feet back on the ground, the interim boss was planning for the visit of Northampton Town the following Tuesday.
Kevin Nolan – another member of the 300-game club – brought a team to Bolton for the first time as a manager. Had circumstances worked out differently when Football Ventures first took over in 2019, he may have had a crack at managing Wanderers, the nod eventually going to Keith Hill.
Fans gave ‘Nobby’ a warm reception before kick-off but the biggest cheers were once again reserved for Darby, serenaded as “one of our own”.
The game was once again full of passion, George Thomason setting the Whites on their way with an early goal cancelled out by Liam Shaw. The same player then turned an Aaron Collins cross past his own goalkeeper, and Collins went on to cement three points with a third goal seven minutes from the end.
Darby led a gracious lap of appreciation at the end knowing his jobs" target="_blank">work had been done – at least at first team level. It was back to the Under-18s to complete what would end up a treble-winning season.
He had no desire to take the post full-time and after the match he shared what he had told the dressing room.
“I said I’d like to thank them all from the bottom of my heart,” he added. “I’d like to thank them for what they have done for me and the memories you have made for me in the last two games.
“They have been very special, something I could never have envisaged. I never ever thought I would manage Bolton Wanderers, 100 per cent not.
“But to get the full set, going all the way through from an apprenticeship to player to manager, it’s the stuff of dreams, really.”
Though the club’s official line that night was that the manager search was “ongoing” it would only be two days before the reins were officially passed on to Bolton’s 26th post-war manager, and a person who definitely knew his way out of League One.
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