It should be a fairly even game, and has the potential to be quite dismal. Both sides are essentially full strength (Bolton are missing out on Sean Davis and Joey O’Brien), but really Bolton’s full strength is nothing to talk about. Jlloyd Samuel, whose form this season has been dubious at best, returns to us from his silly suspension. As you may be able to tell I am still in a bad mood from our last three games.

Gary Megson is also getting frustrated with his side, as he told the Wanderers that only Jussi could be sure of starting this Sunday. The Ginger One said:

“Whatever team it turns out to be on Sunday… if Jussi is not playing, he is the only one who could say it is out of order. Everyone else who plays against Blackburn can consider themselves fortunate in my book.”

You almost feel sorry for him. He’s probably lost more hair over the matter (I know, low blow). But for me it’s difficult to determine how much of our sides horrible form is due to lack of motivation by the manager or the players themselves. I suppose it doesn’t much matter as long as they get their act together. I stand by the statement that firing Megson wouldn’t do us any good, and recently I was listening to an interview with Simon Kuper. He coauthored a book (called Why England Lose in the UK and Soccernomics in the US) which evaluated football through statistics and he found that sacking the manager rarely made a difference in the points earned.

So Hopefully whoever is messing up gets their act together and Bolton play like they did a month ago against Blackburn! I may do a bit of a news round up later, but if not I’ll see you at report time!

As you may have read in TheSpoiler (highly recommended by the way), Darius Vassell, ex-Man City striker, has been experience a few bumps over in Turkey. First off he only scores 2 goals in 7 games (admittedly a far better record than our dear Elmander’s), then he gets kicked out of his hotel because the club Ankaragucu failed to pay the bill. According to News of the World, he’s eying a move back to England, perhaps to Bolton. Well you’ve got to feel sorry for the guy, things must be bad if Bolton is an escape.

Earlier in the week Phil Gartside, Bolton’s chairmen, proposed once again two have the two Old Firm teams join our league, and make the Premiership two tiered. He was shot down, thankfully. I’ll take my Premierhsip just how it is, thankyouverymuch!

Lastly some player news. We have a cute display of man love from our dearest captain Kevin Davies, backing his teammate Gary Cahill for an England cap:

“I think he can do that job, he will just have to bide his time a little bit because he’s one for the future. He’ll be hard for us to keep hold of somewhere down the line.”

As we all know by now, he didn’t actually get to play. But still this is cute.
And our wayward striker Johan Elmander says he’ll try to regain his Toulose form. Apparently even he thought he would never score a goal again.

“You hope it is in there somewhere but the longer you go there thinking you start wondering if it is ever going to come back.”

You weren’t alone love. I’m glad you’re one your way back.

That’s all for now, but stay tuned for, perhaps, another news round up, and a definite match preview!

I’m sure my optimism will resurrect itself soon enough with the phoenix-like qualities necessary for any Bolton fan, but the international break is definitely welcome at this point. I’ll be back later in the week with a news round up, and any news of our internationally-inclined Trotters, I’m off to sleep away the pain!

On to football, Aston Villa won’t be easy opposition. They’re 7 points ahead of us in the table however their last three results LDD. Just this past Wednesday they lost to West Ham, who we beat not so long ago. They’ve hit a bit of a rut in form, however their squad will be smarting from the defeat and will be welcoming Bolton with something to prove.

They probably won’t be smarting as much as Bolton is coming off two straight defeats by a margin of 4-0 by a certain Chelsea F.C. As my father pointed out in his guest post, Davies and Elmander are really starting to work together nicely. Our midfield is also gelling quite well. Overall we’re shaping up to be a rather good team and I think we have a decent chance against Aston Villa.

I’m hoping we at least get a draw, after all we will be away. So I know that was one of the worst, least in depth match previews I’ve done, but I have about a million other things to do so apologies! I’ll be back as soon as possible, maybe I’ll try to steal wireless from the neighbors or something in England and sneak a post in. Til then.

In the same report Burnden Leisure plc (Bolton’s parent company) has announced a loss of £13.2mil for the past fiscal year. This rose from their losses the previous year by £5mil. Hopefully this won’t affect the club too much, though it definitely isn’t a good sign.

Also the American pop star Pink will be visiting the Reebok and giving a conecert (I told you the news was pedestrian!). So if you live in/around Bolton and like Pink be sure to get your tickets. The woman’s completely mad (as evidenced here and here) So I suppose we should just all hope she doesn’t tear up the pitch too much.

Anyway I should be back tomorrow doing the match preview. I’m not sure if I’ll get the chance to do a report, as I’m flying to England on Friday and won’t really have internet until I come back to the States (which is not a fixed date as of now).

I first experienced (there is no more precise word) the Reebok Rebels about three years ago. My jaw has been in a state of near-permanent downward dislocation ever since. I have nothing against cheerleaders in theory. Indeed, I have often wished I had several things against them in practice. But just as there are some things that shouldn’t be attempted in Texas (fish and chips, meat pies, a decent pint), the same applies in reverse. Cheerleaders are one of them. The girl directly in front of me swayed listlessly to series of dreadful 70s disco tracks; but at least she wasn’t bedraggled, as they usually are (and take it from me, the wet look does not suit Bolton cheerleaders). She was wearing what looked like a badly torn bin liner, but, then looking down the line of unco-ordinated lovelies, I realised they were all in similar outfits. After three numbers, my cheerleader (sorry, dancer) began to look distinctly distressed – her breathing became obviously laboured, she struggled to raise her perfectly Horwich-tanned leg above ground level, and could barely lift her pom-pom in the general direction of Rivington. It occurred to me that Sir Alex might like to weigh in on this disgraceful failure of fitness….

But I digress. I really wanted to write about Lofty the Lion. (Editor’s note: you can find an extremely odd interview conducted with Lofty here . It appears that he believes he is actually a lion) The mascot was pottering aimlessly about the pitch, doing a very passable impression of our strikers, albeit admittedly with slightly more sense of rhythm and purpose than the cheerleaders, wearing a no 9 shirt – the Lion of Horwich of course. When the teams finally came out, and the cheerleaders collapsed in a wheezing heap, Lofty stood, deliberately I thought, next to our current number nine, Johan Elmander, and for a moment it was difficult to tell them apart, until one realised that Lofty had rather better hair, and looked somewhat less depressed – which is perhaps unsurprising, given that Elmander is Swedish and in the middle of a three-year goal famine.

The match itself followed a fairly typical recent pattern of Bolton encounters with more exalted opponents. For almost the whole of the first half, they held their own, without looking wholly outclassed, although without ever really looking like scoring either. Chelsea were far more incisive, and Bolton were only kept in the game by the brilliance of Jaaskalainen, who made half a dozen brilliant saves, the best after a Gary Cahill error saw Drogba clean through on goal. Cahill’s play was a particularly frustrating mixture: he looked cool and collected on the ball, and van distribute it well, but he made two appalling mistakes both of which should have been punished – sounds like England central defender material then. Bolton’s midfield struggled to gain possession, and then struggled to do anything useful with it. Cohen failed to make the impact of recent games, Muamba played reasonably well in a holding role, Chung-Yong Lee ran around energetically, but without much obvious purpose, and Basham didn’t do much of anything at all. Tactically, Samuel hung back and inside, leaving acres of space on the right for Ivanovic to occupy and always provide an outlet for a Chelsea pass. Ricketts, as is the way with wing-backs these days, looked impressive going forward and naïve and outclassed in defense. The most encouraging feature of Bolton’s play was an emerging understanding between Kevin Davies and Elmander, which is surprising in view of the fact that the Swede doesn’t speak that much English (but then again neither does Kevin Davies, which perhaps accounts for it). Twice Davies flicked on for Elmander to come close, the best attempt being a curling right-footed effort that dipped just over the bar. Elmander returned the favour with an angled header that took Carvalho out of the game, and which Davies met with a first-time left-foot shot that slid past the post when he might have done better to take a first touch. And then in the 46th minute, confusion in the Bolton defence sends Drogba through one more time – Jlloyd brings him down (although not in the vociferous opinion of the supporters around me, the strength of whose opinions was matched only by their preposterousness), is sent off, and Lampard coolly nets the penalty. If only they’d made it to half-time….

Megson brought on Gardner and Robinson for Basham and Lee, and Bolton’s hitherto ragged formation became as shapeless as a pregnancy smock. They didn’t cave in though; Gardner’s presence gave the midfield bite, at the cost of a few typically wayward passes, and Bolton tried bravely to press forwards – which of course left them hopelessly vulnerable on the break, and when Ricketts stood off the dancing Anelka, the Frenchman slid a pass across the area for Deco to finish with power and precision past a Jaaskelainen for the first time outclassed. ‘Bolton reject’ chanted a section of the home crowd whenever Anelka touched the ball (although without malice) – which simply emphasized the fact that, if there had been a rejection involved, it wasn’t on the part of Bolton. Chelsea’s superior passing and ability on the ball now really began to tell against a tiring Bolton, and in truth Chelsea in this kind of form can make any team look a man short. They duly made Bolton look two men short. The end was all too predictable, although the score, I think, flattered Chelsea in the end, although one of their goals was scored by the hapless Zat Knight. 3-1 seems about right. Now, just get it in the right net, Zat. Megson jumped up and down waving his arms on the opposite touchline, like a rather more than usually co-ordinated cheerleader – in the end, even he began to flag, and sat down panting in what they laughingly call the ‘technical area’. Perhaps Sir Alex….

I’m not saying we deserves a win, or even a goal, but 4-0? I think 2-0 would have been a much fairer result. Bolton played well and attacked well (though they floundered in the final third) through the first half, and while Chelsea totally outclassed them in the second half, they didn’t give up and kept going forward despite the increasing deficit.

There were definitely encouraging things to take away from the game. Chelsea are a fantastic team, I was blown away in parts of the game by the beauty of their football. The inescapable fact of the matter is that Chelsea has massive amounts of money and Bolton don’t, Drogba alone cost about as much as Bolton has spent in the last two years. Chelsea aren’t a team we will ever be able to beat easily, and they aren’t the team we need to be taking points from.

While I’m not bitter about the loss in hind sight (I wrote the first part of this blog right after the game, and I’m finishing it the next morning), I am bitter about the blow to our goal difference. And let’s be honest, watching the ball going into the wrong net four times hurts. But overall it wasn’t a horrible result.

That’s all I plan on saying on the matter (to be quite honest I’m a little sick of writing about Chelsea), but stay tuned as my father will be doing a guest blog for me on the game. He was in England for family reasons and managed to make it to the Reebok (breaking his 10 year streak of never seeing the Wanderers lose at home). I should have that up sometime Monday or Tuesday, til then!

Yes Kevin dear, you are number 1.

Hello again, it seems as though I’ve been posting a lot lately, to match the Trotter’s busy schedule. Chelsea will be paying us a visit this Saturday, a mere 72 hours after we saw them last. And trust me, I haven’t missed them. Here’s a link to the BBC’s preview of the match. They’re not overly optimistic for Bolton’s plight.

Not only have Chelsea kept a clean sheet in their last three games, but they’ve also scored a total of 13 goals (which is about as much as Bolton’s scored this season). There is no doubt that Chelsea are in terrifyingly good form right now.

Bolton will, however, have the aid of our goalkeeper and one of our top scorers (Super Kevin Davies). Rio Ferdinand called Davies one of the three toughest opponents he’s ever played, citing his pure physicality.
And it’s true, Kev is one tough bloke, he required 2 stitches above his left eye after the Manchester United game, but refused to come off the pitch, and then during the Everton game he needed 3 stitches above his right eye, and still refused to come off. As Gary Megson so kindly pointed out, he is an absolute model professional, on an off the pitch. It’ll be good to have our skipper back.

Things will definitely look better for Bolton on Saturday, our injury list will be down to Joey O’Brien and Sean Davies, so our nearly full (albeit small) squad will be available, and hopefully rearing to go.

After Wednesday’s disaster I am hoping that Wanderers will want their pride back. I hope they rise to the occasion and take this for what it is: a chance to play a quality game of football, not a chance for us to get our pants beaten off (again).

“I have considered this decision long and hard, and I believe that it is now the right time to give younger Finnish goalkeepers the chance to play on the international stage.”

I fear his club retirement can’t be far off. The testimonial match seemed a bit like a death warrant to me, after all you don’t do a testimonial match for someone who will be with you for years to come. To all Fins: I’m sorry for your loss. Jussi is a great keeper and a total legend.

Moving right along (sorry if I got a bit emotional there), Camel Meriem will not be joining the Wanderers. It seems as though he will be going on trial with Blackburn, though he is currently nursing an injury in France. Best of luck to Meriem, hopefully he will find the oasis of a football club soon (I couldn’t resist).

And lastly Joey O’Brien has signed and extension of his contract. He is now bound to the Reebok until 2011. O’Brien came up through our very own youth system, so I very much would like him to succeed. Unfortunately he’s been plagued with injuries and is currently recovering from a bad knee injury.

That’s all for general news, but keep an eye out for my posts about Chelsea coming up!