Marked for Anthony Moore
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match8 Sep 2029
12 matches unbeaten here. Every visiting manager is asked about it in the week before, which is precisely why it keeps going.
Squad10 Sep 2029
Atsuki Ito and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad10 Sep 2029
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Anthony Moore is 17, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Transfer targets10 Sep 2029
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Bolton Wanderers will try again when the window opens; Aston Villa may not be selling by then.
Match8 Sep 2029
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 6 matches without defeat is a foundation Bolton Wanderers did not have in the autumn.
Player ratings10 Sep 2029
Marked 7.85 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Bolton Wanderers had the best player on the pitch.
Player ratings10 Sep 2029
Successful dribbles: 15. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Market13 Aug 2029
The offer from AFC Wimbledon for Jayden Nelson was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Transfer targets13 Aug 2029
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Market13 Aug 2029
As if he never left: Finlay Corke returns
Some transfers need a press campaign. This one needed a shirt with the old number on it. Finlay Corke is a Bolton Wanderers player again, and the town has its story of the summer.
Squad13 Aug 2029
Sam Dalby and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match11 Aug 2029
10 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad13 Aug 2029
At 17 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad13 Aug 2029
Atsuki Ito falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The terraces13 Aug 2029
He is 22 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Match11 Aug 2029
A 1‑0 win over Swansea City, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market19 Feb 2029
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Match17 Feb 2029
There were 87 minutes on the clock and Portsmouth had all but banked the point. Football rarely reads the room, and Bolton Wanderers did not stop to explain themselves.
Player ratings19 Feb 2029
Sam Dalby scores twice — 8.76
Two goals and a mark of 8.76 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad19 Feb 2029
Gavin Bazunu was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad19 Feb 2029
A move Jake Griffin would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Jake Griffin is living that version at Bolton Wanderers, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad19 Feb 2029
Gaizka Larrazabal falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Transfer targets19 Feb 2029
Bolton Wanderers asked and Manchester United said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Match17 Feb 2029
It finished 2‑1, and it was Sam Dalby’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Bolton Wanderers.
The terraces19 Feb 2029
He is 17 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.