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It’s
only five and a bit years since this Millennium began. The blink
of a cosmic eye, but in footballing terms, December 31st 1999 seems
eons away. If I were Ian Rush, I might even say, “It was like
living in a different century”
Football moves pretty quick these days, especially at the top level
where you’re forever chasing your tail just to keep up. Take
the case of Bolton Wanderers. People always talk about Charlton
as the role model for provincial clubs trying to make it in the
big time. But screw that. Bolton have done it bigger, better, faster,
because they’re a club in a hurry.
Go back to the turn of the century and only two figures remain for
Bolton; a goalkeeper, who we’ll come onto later, and an architect.
For Big Sam Allardyce is every bit as much an architect as a football
manager for these days, Bolton Wanderers is very much the club that
Sam built.
You have to feel a little bit sorry for Sam, because in modern day
terms, he’s very nearly done a Cloughie at Bolton. When Brian
stalked this land, there was still a chance for a small town club
to go and win the biggest prize, the title itself. It took some
doing, and only a genius like Clough could pull it off, but it was
possible.
Those days are long, long gone, lost amid the monied wastes of the
post-Premiership landscape. These days, if you don’t work at
Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge, Highbury or Anfield, you’ve
got as much chance of winning the league as Ally McCoist has of
becoming the next Pope.
But if we take them out of the equation, Bolton have all but become
the Derby County of the day, a side that can still finish higher
than far more fancied, better supported and better financially endowed
clubs. Manchester City, Everton, Newcastle, Tottenham and Aston
Villa, to name just a few, would love to have enjoyed the sustained
improvement and consistently high threshold of achievement that
is rapidly becoming common place at the Reebok.
League Cup runners-up in 2004, a terrific European campaign this
season, finishing 8th, then 6th, and in the top seven again now,
those are remarkable statistics for a club that spent 30 years in
the wilderness in the post-Lofthouse era.
Allardyce has worked this little miracle by attention to detail,
making full use of the resources granted to him by taking on nutritionists,
sports psychologists, every manner of technological aid that few,
if any, other Premiership clubs have employed. Above all, he appears
to have a scouting network of which Baden-Powell would have been
proud, manifested by the rapid turnover of players at Bolton –
47 player deals have been done over the course of the last two seasons
alone.
Which makes Jussi Jasskelainen somewhat special, as well being as
a typing error just waiting to happen.
Jussi, as we’ll call him, even predates Sam Allardyce, signing
on for Bolton as far back as November 1997 when the club paid £100,000
to bring him over from his native Finland. More than 300 first team
games since then would tend to indicate that this was a pretty decent
decision for both parties, with the Finn going on to become among
the most consistent goalkeepers in the country over that time.
He only turns 31 on Wednesday, so that’s an appearance record
that he could double given luck with fitness, for Bolton seem in
no hurry to replace him.
If the press reports are to be believed, replacing Kevin Nolan might
be on the agenda in the summer for a number of big clubs have been
linked with him in recent times, not least Manchester United who,
supposedly, even sent Paul Scholes out to watch him to see if he
could be his replacement – if true, that’s a pretty handy
compliment.
Nolan has had a magnificent season, and while it’s unfair to
call him a surprise packet given that he’s been around a while
now, he’s emerged from the shadows this season to make himself
a real player on the Premiership stage, with a few even touting
him as an outside bet for England’s World Cup squad.
And all this from a lad who came through the ranks at Bolton –
they don’t all come out of Sam’s heavily thumbed I-Spy
Guide to World Footballers you know.
Where Bolton have scored is in finding a winning synthesis between
the up and coming, the surprise import that nobody else has considered,
the misfit and, for want of a better phrase, the old lag.
Gary Speed falls into the latter camp, the 37 year old boasting
a great Premiership career at Leeds, Newcastle, Everton and Bolton.
More than 730 senior club games, 84 Welsh caps, we’re in the
presence of walking, talking footballing history here.
The Misfits was one of the all-time great movies, starring Clark
Gable and Marilyn Monroe.
If they do a remake, they could do worse than cast Kevin Davies
and El-Hadji Diouf, though who takes which part I’ll leave
it to you to judge. Davies was branded a flop at Blackburn when
a £7.5million move from Southampton turned into a nightmare.
He returned to the south coast for a time and even had to endure
a loan spell at Millwall, before the Hand of Sam plucked him from
obscurity and up to Bolton.
Once installed, he’s become one of the most important players
on the Bolton books, playing through the middle, taking the knocks
and bruises, winning the ball, allowing the likes of Diouf, Stelios
and Nolan to join up and flood past him and into the box.
Diouf’s a character who can’t escape controversy, a characteristic
that took him out of Anfield, but Bolton’s forward thinking
attitude has rehabilitated him, Allardyce’s cohorts getting
inside his head and channelling his undoubted talent in the right
direction.
One of the most successful Premiership imports of the last decade
has been Nigeria’s Jay-Jay Okocha. A great passer of the ball,
excellent close control, an ability to produce a stunning goal,
all allied to an exemplary work ethic, if you had to pick out a
single player most responsible for taking Bolton onto their current
lofty perch, an invidious task it’s true, you’d have to
go for Okocha.
Amid the more rudimentary elements of Bolton’s play - and that’s
not meant as a criticism but a pragmatic assessment of Bolton’s
necessarily pragmatic approach – Okocha’s style means
they’re still capable of moments of pure gold that elevate
them above the norm.
They’ve also got this Greek lad, Stelios, whose full name is
even harder work to get right than his mate in goal, so we’ll
settle for the shortened version he sports on the back of his shirt.
A European Champion with Greece, he might not be going to the World
Cup in the summer, but his performances for his club have been of
a consistently high standard, week after week. There again, with
Sam Allardyce and sammy Lee waiting in the dressing room, would
you want to have a stinker?
With a handful of games to go, it’s been another successful
season for the Bolton boys. But what happens if Big Sam gets the
Big Job this summer? That’s a whole new chapter…
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