The Bolton Wanderers Herald
Squad9 Oct 2028
The knee: Carlos Mendes Gomes out for 91 days
91 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Bolton Wanderers lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Match7 Oct 2028
The wait goes on for Bolton Wanderers
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Match7 Oct 2028
Bolton Wanderers leaking at the back
6 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
Squad9 Oct 2028
Carlos Mendes Gomes wants to go home
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Bolton Wanderers can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Squad9 Oct 2028
A row about effort at Bolton Wanderers
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Sam Dalby was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout9 Oct 2028
No hiding place for Xavier Simons
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Xavier Simons, and the manager let it.
Match7 Oct 2028
A bad afternoon for Bolton Wanderers against Blackburn Rovers
0‑2 to Blackburn Rovers, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Player ratings9 Oct 2028
Rio Ngumoha runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad9 Oct 2028
Bolton Wanderers lose Luca Kirkpatrick
28 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
In brief
- The dugout Bolton Wanderers keep their word to Rio Ngumoha
- The dugout The manager has not finished forgetting Di'Shon Bernard's mistake
- The dugout Harry Cooper faces the questions