Wanderers 2 Blackpool 2
What an afternoon! It seemed that every team in the league was involved with either promotion or relegation. There’s a lot to be said for modern technology but really, during the game, it was a tremendous distraction. Apart from watching the dramatic events unfold on the pitch, there was always one eye on the smart phone, particularly on scores in the Leicester v Nottingham Forest match but also on Crystal Palace v Peterborough and (because of where I live) Huddersfield v Barnsley.
I’m sure that at one stage in added time Dougie was waving his men back to defend as Leicester and Forest were drawing. Then word went round the Reebok, Leicester had taken the lead in the ninety first minute and, suddenly, our dream was over. It’s been a pulse-quickening end to the season but, when push came to shove, we weren’t quite good enough. Paul Ince’s Blackpool side looked good and, if this game was any indication, they will be a prominent contender in next season’s Championship.
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Wanderers 2 Middlesborough 1
In the middle of last week it seemed that the spell of good fortune, which has aided our remarkable ascent of the Championship table, had run its course. First came the news that another crucial bit had fallen off Dougie’s points gathering machine, namely Jay Spearing’s broken toe. This was followed by defeat at Leicester where, if the various reports I read were accurate, we deserved at least a point.
Our tentative finger hold on a playoff place was stamped on and we lost another player, David N’Gog, for the rest of the season. The elusive lady, however, had only taken a break. She returned to the Reebok in all her glory and helped us to an eighth consecutive home victory and a return to the heavily contested sixth spot in the league table.
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Wanderers 2 Wolves 0
There have been some cracking games between the Wanderers of Bolton and the Wanderers of Wolverhampton. This wasn’t one of them but for the best part of half an hour it seemed that the 2013 encounter might rival the Battle of Burnden in January 1997 when Wolves over physical approach led to a mass brawl involving most of the players of both teams before we played them off the park.
This latest encounter began with Bolton playing our best football for a long time and taking an early two goal lead before swashbuckling gave way to pragmatism and we concentrated on preserving the advantage. It was a tad frustrating but at the end of ninety minutes we had another three points, we had kept another clean sheet, and we had narrowed the distance to the coveted sixth position.
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Wanderers 1 Huddersfield Town 0
As some of you will know I have recently been in hospital. As a result I can’t ride my bike at the moment and, as I normally spend a fair amount of time in the saddle, I’m missing it.
This is possibly the reason why I’ve been thinking of Bolton’s recent fortunes in terms of a taxing bike ride. We spent several weeks climbing slowly up the table, rather like me toiling up a long, Alpine ascent; we worked hard to accumulate points without ever playing at our best in a similar way to me grinding out the kilometres and keeping in a low gear. At Ipswich we began to wobble, followed by a recovery in the first few minutes at Charlton. Then came the crash when the wheels came off; we lost and had two men sent off.
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Wanderers 1 Brighton 0
I was full of anticipation for this game, especially as our opponents are one of the Championship’s form teams. Having missed the Chris Eagles late, late show, or as one internet poster described it, ‘the best moment ever at the Reebok’, even the bitterly cold and annoyingly damp weather couldn’t dent the idea that the Wanderers are in the midst of something special. By the end of the game that thought had been knocked about a bit, but ‘four in a row’ had become five and we had climbed another rung towards a playoff position.
Dougie made just one change from Tuesday’s team; the match winner Eagles replaced Medo in the following line-up: Lonergan; Ricketts, Knight, Dawson, Alonso; Eagles, Pratley, Spearing, Chung; N’Gog, Kevin Davies. I was surprised that Davies was playing his second game in five days; I had expected Craig Davies to start or N’Gog to be the loan striker with both Eagles and Medo starting.
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