THE end of a gruelling January is within Wanderers’ reach – what price a performance to beat the winter blues?
Saturday’s last-minute winner and the sight of Bolton climbing to third in the table was not enough to cheer the paying punters, many of whom made their frustrations abundantly clear during a scrappy 90 minutes.
Steven Schumacher conceded that his side had not been at their best, presenting in mitigation the fact they had played a rough-and-tumble game at Stevenage only a few days earlier and had played roughly half the amount of football as their opponents had during the month so far.
The Bolton boss knows by now that this is a tough crowd. Friday represents one year in the job for the 41-year-old, who will be looking to rack up his 25th victory in the post against Burton Albion. Championship football remains the target but quite unlike his promotion-against-the-odds with Plymouth Argyle a few years ago, he is unlikely to ride a wave of hope and optimism along the way.
This is a time of year when the quality of football can fail. Burton will be Wanderers’ eighth opponent since the turn of the year, with Wimbledon lying in wait as the ninth, and a taxing schedule has coincided with a transfer window policy of trimming down the squad before bringing any fresh faces in.
Other than having their hand forced on the goalkeeping front by Teddy Sharman-Lowe and Tyler Miller’s exit, Wanderers have remained relatively immobile on the transfer front, with young defender Lewis Temple the only new addition.
Furthermore, as Victor Adeboyejo, Will Forrester, Josh Dacres-Cogley and Joel Randall filed out of the door, Schumacher’s squad has been hit by a few inconvenient injuries, with Marcus Forss and key man Amario Cozier-Duberry ruled out for several weeks.
Schumacher has tried his best to keep transfer talk to a minimum over the last few weeks, deflecting towards Fergal Harkin as the man responsible for negotiating between clubs and the board. The sporting director has not done any external interviews since last summer but did take questions from fans at a Q&A in November.
As such, it is difficult to ascertain whether the one-way traffic in the January window has been the result of cuts to the playing budget, or if by scaling down the size of the squad it is being made easier to manage.
Unhappy fringe players were causing problems for Schumacher through December and into the New Year, and that negativity may have bled into the main group, contributing to a drop in form at Christmas. The situation looked to be reaching a head prior to the win at Wigan but an impressively resolute performance on enemy territory has led to the Whites winning seven points from a possible nine over the last three games.
Ordinarily that would be cause for celebration, yet the quality of performance has not met with everyone’s liking for the past couple of games, and though Schumacher is of the mind that any win is a good one is what he describes as the “grind” phase of the season, not everyone is of a mind to agree.
“There have been occasions this season where we have played really well and haven't won. You'll get a section of fans saying it doesn't matter how you play, you've just got to win.
“Then you'll get a section of fans now saying a win is not good enough, you have got to play better than that.
“But I don't think from our point of view you can affect how the fans are because there'll be different opinions from everyone. From our point of view, we just need to make sure we keep trying to get points.
“We know we won't play the same style of game every week. We won't have the same flow and the same rhythm. The game doesn't go to the same plan.
“You have to find a different way to win. At the end of the day it's getting points on the board that puts you into good positions in the league – and we are currently in one.
“At this moment in time, in the patch that we're in and the run of fixtures that we've had, the amount of games that we've played, it's understandable maybe that performances have not been as fluent as they were at the very start of the season.
“We are in the grind stage, so we've got to grind results out.”
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