Who is Bolton Wanderers' biggest asset in the Championship?

Steven Schumacher isn’t one to rant nor rave unnecessarily. And in a summer of delays in the transfer market, he has seldom allowed that frustration to peek through as he prepares the club for their first season at this level of football in seven years.

Many of the players who outfought Bradford City over two legs of May’s semi-final then outclassed Stockport County to claim promotion will be back again, desperate to show they can mix it with better opposition and a brighter spotlight.

But the head coach, who has already sampled many of the highs and lows that the Championship can offer, could well be the most valuable asset Wanderers possess as they look to put down some roots on the next chapter of their story.

In his stints with Plymouth Argyle and Stoke City, Schumacher has already taken charge of 51 games in the second tier, winning 18, drawing 11 and losing 22. He coped with the lowest playing budget in the division during his first half-season at Home Park and then steered the Potters away from relegation trouble in just over a year at the Bet365 Stadium.

His current task at Bolton would appear, on the surface, to be a mixture of his two previous posts. A club not blessed with a huge pot of cash to spend readily but one which also carries with it a history and expectation comparable any of their peers.

A tough task but one which brings about the same sort of excitement as any during his football career as a player or a coach.

“I can’t wait for it,” he said. “It is a huge step up on every level.

“Physically, the league is a lot bigger. Players when they are standing in the tunnel just seem taller when you are next to them. And compared to League One you can just see they are physically stronger, better athletes. The speed that some of them run just catches you by surprise.

“The first time I experienced it was at Elland Road when Crysencio Summerville sprinted past the dugout and he was so quick, it surprises you. The quality, even the way the ball sounds when players pass you, it’s a huge step up, but the biggest one is how clinical the teams are. You can be in control of a game and then within a few minutes you are out of it because they have gone and scored two or three goals.

“Everything is at a better level. It is a huge challenge and it's no different to what I've already faced before.”

Schumacher had a four-month settling-in period with Bolton where League One play-offs briefly looked possible but them undertook a significant squad rebuild last season to meet his target at the first time of asking.

He had inherited a team that had knocked on the door of the Championship but lacked the nous, the mentality or the timing to break through. And last summer’s brief had been to create a team that conceded fewer goals, one which could not be labelled with having a ‘soft centre’.

The pre-season training camp in Spain centred on team shape and defensive drills, and the upshot was fewer goals conceded. This summer, on the manicured fields of the Slovakian Olympic squad, Schumacher altered his focus.

“What I still want to see continue that defensive attitude,” he told The Bolton News. “I thought we were a lot better as a team, we valued defending every week last season, every player in the squad.

“I made that decision last summer to release players that I didn't feel were going to help us from a defensive aspect, because everybody in a successful team has got to buy in and defend.

“We did that, we improved, the wide players did really well, Thierry (Gale) got better as it went on, Amario (Cozier-Duberry) was fantastic for us from a defensive output, so that helped us concede 53 goals, which was slightly more than what we wanted and slightly more than the target that we set.

“But this season we are not going to come away from that. It is your bread and butter, make sure you're organised and value that importance of defending.

“The next thing for us to get better at  going into the Championship is making sure that we are more clinical with the opportunities that we get, because you probably won't get as many of them as what we did last year.

“The ones we get you have to make sure that you take, because a lot of these Championship games are decided in really small moments and we don't want to fall foul of being guilty of being careless in front of goal.”

Schumacher added to his backroom team in the summer, bringing in experienced coach Rob Kelly, with whom he had previously worked at Bury.

On the transfer front, Bolton find themselves within a limited budget in comparison to some of the massive spending going on elsewhere in the division. Extra investors have been brought on board but their cash will be diverted towards capital projects such as the academy and stadium upgrades for the time being.

The Bolton boss has been pragmatic with his targets this season, insisting stability in this division is the main priority. History tells us that 52 points is the average safety mark for a Championship club but he is keen not to set limits.

“I think we are just trying to sustain, for now,” he said. “I want a strong season. I want us to be competitive in every single game.

“I know there's going to be games where we'll go and we'll have bad result  but seeing signs that we were brave and we attacked the games, I think that's what I want to see from the team this year. I don't want us to go there and fear anyone. There's obviously so many teams who've got so much more than us currently, bigger squads and whatever. But I just want to go into every game with a no fear attitude and try and take the game to everyone if we can. 

“I don’t want to set targets right now. There can be an element of that down the line where it works and you can keep people focussed over smaller periods of games but for us, and I know it’s the cliché, but we just have to take one game at a time over this time of year.

“If you look too far ahead and think we need six points on this block of four games, then what happens when you lose the first two? That can happen straight away. You put yourself under pressure for the next two.

“For us it's just going to be focus on the next game, try and win that one, see how many points it takes for us to get to where we need to be, which is safety, and then see what happens beyond that.”