Walsall travel to Bolton, looking to improve on their last two visits, which saw a 4-1 league defeat in 2017, and a 5-2 FA Cup defeat two years later. Bolton are the in-form team in League Two at the moment, picking up 13 points from their last 5 games. Walsall, on the other hand, have only managed 2. It is a tough fixture for the Saddlers, who are still seeking a win under Brian Dutton.
To find out more about Bolton, I spoke with Anthony, from Vital Bolton Wanderers, to talk about Walsall’s opposition.
How would you rate your season so far?
It’s okay now, two months ago or so it was absolutely awful but we’ve finally clicked since then. If you told me at this point of the season we’d be a few points off automatic promotion, I’d have taken that, and we’ve been the best team in the league since mid-November in terms of points picked up. So we’re in a good place now.
Bolton have propelled up the league recently and you sit in of the play-offs. Can you stay there?
Yes, we need to keep going, and I think we can even challenge for automatic promotion now. But there are lot of teams around there.
What has changed from the early part of the season to see such a rise up the table?
Quite a few things, one is the goalkeeper. While Ian Evatt probably mishandled the Billy Crellin situation, he wasn’t up to scratch and the mid-November date I mentioned earlier is when Matt Gills was made number one. Also, Evatt was handed a proper vote of confidence in that he was made manager rather than head coach, we got rid of our director of football, and while our side was always good enough in my opinion we managed to add squad depth in January and fix problem positions such as left back, Declan John has been a brilliant signing there. We also added in the wide positions which allowed us to switch from a 3-4-1-2 to a 4-2-3-1, which has worked. We certainly look more like the possession based team we were promised.
Has League Two been the standard you expected?
I went into it not really knowing, partly because I didn’t get to watch too much of it before. I’m not sure the standard has been great though, us going on a run and going from the fringes of a relegation battle to promotion contenders in a month and a bit probably is evidence of that.
Ian Evatt had a pretty rough start to life as Bolton manager. How happy with him are you?
I’m behind him now, there was a feeling around December time it just wasn’t working and if he had left then I probably wouldn’t have lost too much sleep. But credit to him and the board, they’ve stuck at it, he’s been given what he has wanted within reason, and we’ve turned it around. I suppose I was wrong!
What system do you play?
We’re now playing a 4-2-3-1, very possession based and patient short passing, and our wider players will try and cross the ball low. We don’t really have a physical striker up front to launch it if we wanted to. It feels as though we score a lot of goals with cut backs and low crosses.
My guess at tomorrow’s lineup would be: Gilks; Jones, Santos, Baptiste, John; Lee, Williams;. Afolayan, Delfouneso, Isgrove; Doyle
What are Bolton’s strengths and weaknesses?
Our strengths: possession, I think we are up there, if not the best team in the league in terms of possession stats. We’ve also a solid base with Ricardo Santos being an absolute rock at the back for the most part, while Kieran Lee and MJ Williams are good in midfield. West Ham loanee Dapo Afolayan has been exciting out wide, while Eoin Doyle is a proven striker at this level and Shaun Miller has nabbed a few late winners off the bench. We’ve also got attacking midfield options off the bench, our fitness is pretty good, and we’re good at coming back from behind.
Our weaknesses: Set-pieces – while we have got better it feels in recent weeks, our record scoring and conceding from set pieces hasn’t been good.
Breaking teams down – Sometimes it feels as if we can do better in the final third, for all of the ball we do have if teams decide to put men behind the ball. Although we haven’t failed to score since early January, conversely all our wins have been by one or two goals. It’d be nice to just absolutely paste someone!
Gilks has largely done well, don’t get me wrong, but he has made a couple of mistakes which have led to goals, although he has balanced that out with some miracle saves. In any case he was initially bought in as a player-coach and is getting on, so in the summer we do need to look a new keeper.
Finally, what do you know about the Saddlers? Predictions for the game?
I can’t say I know too much about yourselves, I am aware of Darrell Clarke leaving for Port Vale in recent times and that you don’t appear to be in great form, Hayden White is one of our ex-players but we was young and never really broke into the side on a regular basis. As for a prediction, I’ll go 1-0 to Bolton, I would hope for us to be winning this, but I don’t expect you to roll over and play dead.
