For those of you who haven't been on the Bolton Nuts website or forum before (in which case where have you been because you're missing an awesome site) I am a 47 year old Trotter who has been following BWFC for forty years, thirty of them as a season ticket holder in my own right. This is my first attempt at a BWFC blog and I plan to make it a weekly event. There'll also be 'mini-blogs' if we have a mid-week game or if something of immediate and genuine impact (good or bad) happens between the 'main' Friday missives. It's my hope you'll enjoy them and that some other fans will want to add a blog or two of their own. Right now it's my intent to have one of these ready for you to read and comment on every Friday and I'd like to briefly thank sluffy for letting me do them. I'd also like to thank (in advance) karlypants and BoltonTillIDie who I understand will be judiciously editing these and adding appropriate images or video as needed. Anyway let's get down to business.
Third Tier, No Money, New Manager, No Stars, New Owners.
Don't Worry, We've Been Here Before.
On first glance it would seem to be a very gloomy time to be a Trotter. The club has just suffered relegation to League One, the new owners don't appear to be on the best of terms, there doesn't appear to be any money in the kitty for transfers in and a new manager sits at the helm of a club that has just released a lot of players and is on the verge of selling one of our best young prospects. We've barely avoided administration of not outright liquidation and the new season is just a few weeks away. However what strikes me isn't all the bad or negative things that have happened in the last few months, it's the remarkable, almost uncanny parallels between the 2016/17 season and events that took place thirty years ago before many of our current fans were even born.
If anything that situation was even worse, we'd barely escaped extinction, we'd been relegated to Division 4 (League 2 to those not old enough to remember life before the Premier League), our ground was a wreck and we'd sold a chunk of the Embankment to the now defunct and then infamous Normid store chain to keep some money, any money in the kitty. Crowds were falling, the players were whomever we could get and we seemed to be going nowhere fast. By the end of the 1980's the immediate threat of extinction had faded largely thanks to Lifeline and the continued support of both Gordon Hargreaves and the Warburton Family but even though we felt a little bit more optimistic about things and we had got out of the bottom flight we didn't seem to be doing much else which was by and large fine by many fans, myself included. For the most part we were just happy we still had a club to support. There might not have been many of us but those of us who were still there were fiercely loyal to the club but not even we really believed we were 'big' in the sense that someone like Leeds United could claim. None of us really expected to be brushing shoulders with the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal (the two most successful clubs of the time) on a regular basis any time soon. It was far more likely to be Carlisle United we'd face next season rather than Manchester.
What none of us knew, not even the most cock-eyed optimistic Trotter alive could even have dared to dream was just how radically things were about to change for the better. When the 1990's began you could be forgiven for thinking Bolton Wanderers were just one more small, skint Northern club who bumped along in the bottom two divisions and that would always be the case. Yes we'd made it back up to Division Three (League One) but after two miserable failures in the play off's we'd sunk to mid-table obscurity and (as more than one sports writer opined at the time) we'd seemed to have found our level. No one really liked or disliked us, we weren't at all important in the football world and what glories we had enjoyed were all in the very distant past. Or so it seemed.
What none of us knew, not even the most cock-eyed optimistic Trotter alive could even have dared to dream was just how radically things were about to change for the better. When the 1990's began you could be forgiven for thinking Bolton Wanderers were just one more small, skint Northern club who bumped along in the bottom two divisions and that would always be the case. Yes we'd made it back up to Division Three (League One) but after two miserable failures in the play off's we'd sunk to mid-table obscurity and (as more than one sports writer opined at the time) we'd seemed to have found our level. No one really liked or disliked us, we weren't at all important in the football world and what glories we had enjoyed were all in the very distant past. Or so it seemed.
On the 29th of May 1992 Bolton Wanderers officially announced the appointment of a new manager by the name of Bruce Rioch. He was a former professional footballer who had been well respected in his time on the field most notably with Derby County with whom he had won the football league in 1974-75 under the late great Brian Clough but despite a solid playing career which included 24 caps for Scotland he hadn't really shaken the earth as a manager. In fact he'd started his managerial career as a player manager at Torquay United in the early 1980's before a short stint in the USA as manager of Seattle Sounders in the now defunct NASL (North American Soccer League) before returning to England to manage Middlesbrough and later Milwall, jobs he'd performed in solidly albeit unspectacularly. By and large his appointment went unremarked and barely noticed by anyone except the Bolton Evening News and BBC North West. Most of the football world, most especially the media were focussed on the creation of the new Premier League and whether or not the fledgling Sky Sports channel (which back then was just one channel) could actually make it work commercially. No one could have guessed that it was the start of a totally incredible period in the history of Bolton Wanderers that would later come to be known as 'The White Hot Years', a period in which clubs like Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United would actually dread seeing our name come up against theirs in any cup competition, a period that would see us jump from the third tier to the Premier League in just three seasons and along the way play brilliant football with players who are now rightfully lauded as 'Legends' among the Trotters faithful.
I'll cover Bruce Rioch's time in charge in the next blog. All I will say now is that younger fans need not think the fact we're in the third tier means things will be boring or the football will be dire. As this is the first blog in what I hope will become a series I simply think it's appropriate to say we've been here before and far from being the disaster it appeared to be it was actually the springboard for some of the most exciting times to be a Trotter that I can remember. So chin up boys and girls because if we perform half as well under Phil Parkinson as we did under Bruce Rioch then good times are right around the corner.
In the meantime, if you'd like me to write a blog about something specific such as a particular player or perhaps a specific season then why not drop me a line via BoltonNuts.co.uk and I'll do my very best to accommodate any requests I get either as part of the 'main' blog which will come out once a week or if it's a particularly interesting topic I'll write it up as a separate 'Special'. Either way why not check out the rest of the Bolton Nuts forum and site, it's well worth the time. Until next week take care and I hope you've enjoyed (or at least stayed awake till the end) the first 'Piper's Piece'.
I'll cover Bruce Rioch's time in charge in the next blog. All I will say now is that younger fans need not think the fact we're in the third tier means things will be boring or the football will be dire. As this is the first blog in what I hope will become a series I simply think it's appropriate to say we've been here before and far from being the disaster it appeared to be it was actually the springboard for some of the most exciting times to be a Trotter that I can remember. So chin up boys and girls because if we perform half as well under Phil Parkinson as we did under Bruce Rioch then good times are right around the corner.
In the meantime, if you'd like me to write a blog about something specific such as a particular player or perhaps a specific season then why not drop me a line via BoltonNuts.co.uk and I'll do my very best to accommodate any requests I get either as part of the 'main' blog which will come out once a week or if it's a particularly interesting topic I'll write it up as a separate 'Special'. Either way why not check out the rest of the Bolton Nuts forum and site, it's well worth the time. Until next week take care and I hope you've enjoyed (or at least stayed awake till the end) the first 'Piper's Piece'.
Author: luckyPeterpiper
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