Trotting Home - Much Ado About Something

Author: / Date: Sunday 30 August 2009

William The White sees hope amidst a summer of discontent

 

After the abject failure to turn up at home to Sunderland and the abject failure to convert chances away at Hull how can we deal with a third successive defeat?

First let us acknowledge our dismay. Three games, zero points, are we meant to be happy? But football supporters are not idiots. We know when dismay is bleak and unrelieved. We can see clouds, dark, bereft of silver linings, we are Bolton fans, we know what they look like. And we can see what happens on the pitch before us. Clearly. Accurately.

There were no boos for our team at the end of the game. I heard no chants of ‘Megson Out’ at any point. Those of us still in the stadium at the end could stand and applaud our players, not out of any sense of duty, but out of respect for a team that has worked, and played, with spirit, ten men against twelve. They did what we want them to do, week after week.

Be Bolton Wanderers. Look the Devil in the eye and don’t back down. Step forward, Muamba. For an hour he was Gerrard’s shadow - and superman was driven deeper and deeper until he was all but out of the game. Step up, Matty Taylor, busy from beginning to end. And Tamir Cohen playing his best game in a white shirt, give us a wave. And Kevin Davies, yes, give us that messy ‘Bolton goal’ another dozen times, and plough that lonely furrow, through the dung and sweat. And JLS, welcome back, you played like you want to play some more.

We faced a Liverpool side that through the first fairly tepid 20 minutes showed they were low on confidence. But, without question, they had the greater skill, the finer ball control, the speed of thought and movement. They also were the most accomplished cheats – the blatant first-half dive by Torres in our area when Jussi didn’t come within a foot of him was extraordinary. His appeal for a penalty was absurd. Mysteriously, he avoided a card. He avoided a lecture. Not one little finger wagged his way. Surprisingly.

Speaking of surprises... We took the lead. In a set-piece Bolton way. I think we are meant to apologise for this, as though free kicks and corners are not part of the game. Despite our lead being ‘very Bolton’ I found myself unable to sit sorrowfully shaking my head at the lack of prettiness. GET IN!

It would help if we learned to defend them though. Johnson had already looked a real threat on several occasions before, seven minutes after taking the lead, we failed to close him down and he shot a pretty neat daisy cutter inside Jussi’s near post.

Half time, honours even. Eleven against eleven. Game on. Excellent.

2-1 to the Whites was unexpected. Davies’s strength, Cohen’s shot gave us a sweet, sweet moment. Just 43 minutes left to defend the lead and Gerrard now playing just in front of his back four.

It seems very difficult to get good referees in this fixture. Last year we had an equaliser disallowed by a phantom foul, given by a referee that had already had to make an apology to us for ensuring we lost at Old Trafford (how surprising that this was the venue, not Fratton Park or the Hawthorns). This year we have a sending off instructed by a cluster of Liverpool players for an offence that was seriously difficult to classify as intentional. I don’t think Wiley is a cheat. I do think he has selective vision. I think he isn’t conscious of this. But clearly here he has a weakness in his game, he instinctively leans towards the rich and powerful.

For sure he changed the game. In fact he destroyed the game as a contest. Now Muamba was part of the last ditch struggle to keep out Liverpool as we fought, hard, to save a point. Gerrard was free and started to run things. And scored. Again. This time the winner.

Our dismay is genuine. The hurt is real. The sense of injustice justified. But those of us who were there saw a genuine match – as long as it was eleven against eleven there was a game that either side could win. We competed. Well.

Be Bolton Wanderers. Play like this at Portsmouth and Birmingham. Play like this at home against Stoke. Work like crazy. Get nine points.

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