"I can't wait" - Steven Schumacher makes Bolton Wanderers pledge after play-off collapse | OneFootball

Bolton are going to miss the play-offs for the first time since the 2021/22 campaign.

Steven Schumacher has admitted that he is looking forward to re-shaping this Bolton Wanderers team over the summer after their chances of finishing in the top six slipped away from them.

A really poor display away at Lincoln City, which resulted in a 4-2 loss, confirmed that Bolton would not make the play-offs this season, after two consecutive campaigns in which they did play in the post-season tournament.

After last season's devastating defeat to Oxford United in the play-off final at Wembley, in which the Wanderers struggled to deal with the magnitude of the day, the pressure was firmly on the club to finally get over the hump this time around.

That pressure proved to be too much for former boss Ian Evatt to handle, and now Schumacher has been unable to pull them up towards the top spots in League One.

Bolton aren't mathematically out of contention yet, but they would have to overturn at least a 14-goal deficit in the final two games of the regular season in order to make it into the top six.

Steven Schumacher makes promising Bolton summer transfer window admission

Now that his side are basically dead and buried, the former Plymouth Argyle manager is looking ahead to the summer and the work he can do to rectify the situation at the Toughsheet Community Stadium.

He admitted after the loss to Lincoln that some serious work needs to go on over the summer to get Bolton back to the position that they need to be in to compete for promotion.

Wanderers are currently on a four-game skid and have conceded 11 goals over that period. Schumacher acknowledged that improvements need to be made to his squad's defence in the short-term too.

He said, via Bolton's YouTube channel: "Creating chances hasn't been a problem all season. Conceding the first goal has been a huge problem. We just don't start games properly and give the opposition a head start nearly all the time, so we're always up against it.

"We need to figure that out because it's difficult enough to win a game at any stage, let alone when you give a team a two-goal head start.

"There's loads of work to do. I can't wait to actually get cracking now with the recruitment and try and get it sorted, because there's definitely areas in this squad that we need to improve, 100 percent."

The boss further stated that he doesn't believe that the current crop of players has the "mentality to get promoted," via the Bolton News. On top of Schumacher's comments, Chris Forino sent an apologetic message to the Bolton supporters on Easter Monday, and admitted that it has been a tough campaign for him and his teammates.

Bolton must find a way over this League One hurdle

By the time next season rolls around, it will have been a decade of campaigns since Bolton were last in the Championship. Evatt managed to recover things in League Two when he was on the brink of being sacked and got them promoted, but he couldn't quite get the job done in the third tier.

Now that task lies with Schumacher, who has already done it once before with Plymouth, just two seasons ago. He won League One with the Pilgrims in the 2022/23 campaign, so he knows what it takes to achieve what Wanderers are striving to achieve.

So the question then becomes is this just a mentality problem with the players, like he has suggested, or is it something bigger than that? Is it something on a club-wide scale, rather than just a problem that can be pinned on those in the first-team? That question should be answered this summer if he gets properly backed.