Bolton Wanderers and Steven Schumacher have to learn key lesson from Ian Evatt, Markham era | OneFootball

Bolton Wanderers' summer transfer window led by Steven Schumacher and Fergal Harkin must learn from lessons of the past.

The last couple of summers have seen Bolton Wanderers waste some brilliant opportunities to build a squad that is capable of gaining promotion to the Championship, and the time is now for those lessons to be learned with new faces in the mix.

Ian Evatt left the club as manager in January, having been in charge since the summer of 2020, whilst Director of Football Chris Markham, in charge of recruitment since January 2021, left the club about a month after the former Barrow boss.

Now, with Steven Schumacher at the helm and Standard Liege’s Sporting Director Fergal Harkin coming into the Toughsheet Community Stadium this summer, there are some key lessons to be learned for Wanderers to go again for the 2025/26 League One season.

They have spent a fair bit of money in relative terms in the last few years to leave themselves now in the middle-of-the-table in the third-tier but despite the money spent on incomings, there has been dithering and a hesitancy, perhaps brought about by over-thinking and trying to be too clever in many ways, that has prevented some potentially key deals getting over the line.

Schumacher has already said that more of an eye test will be used in Bolton’s recruitment this summer and there are some other lessons for Bolton to learn in this transfer window.

Bolton’s squad construction

Formerly an analyst at Huddersfield Town and with The FA, Markham has shown throughout his career, and even at Bolton, that he has an excellent eye for identifying talent.

With Bolton, there were a lot of good signings, most notably in terms of the loanees brought in by the club, such as James Trafford, Conor Bradley, Paris Maghoma and Dapo Afolayan.

However, identifying talent and recognising that they may be of the requisite quality is the job of a scout rather than a Director of Football and the squad planning and general construction has been bizarre to say the least – so much so that Schumacher has seen fit to mention it in the aftermath of Wanderers’ collapse at the back end of this season.

Evatt’s desire to almost exclusively play a back three since January 2022 has cost Bolton, as it has led to a lack of tactical variety and flexibility to chase a game when his ideological principles have been blunted or simply beaten by the opposition.

Evatt believed the way to counter that and have something of a ‘Plan B’ with more tactical flexibility, as he mentioned, was to switch to a 3-4-2-1 system.

That system still lacked wingers and Bolton now have a squad that doesn’t have any out-and-out left-backs or wingers and only has one out-and-out striker.

Bolton’s inconsistent caution

As well as the refusal to bring in players to play a different tactical system, which could have been required if Evatt left the club mid-way through a season (that was the case), which is something a Director of Football is supposed to mitigate against, Bolton also ended up missing out on several key targets.

In the summer of 2023, Wanderers were keen on signing both Kane Wilson and Keanu Baccus and both deals appeared to be very close before Bolton pulled out of the former and were seemingly rejected by the latter due to hesitancy and a lack of commitment from the club.

Wilson went on to score a crucial winning goal for Derby County against Bolton as the Rams gained automatic promotion to the Championship, whilst Baccus did remain with Saint Mirren in Scotland before heading to League One with Mansfield Town this summer, but the Australian international is a profile of midfielder that the Trotters have been desperately lacking – and a back-up for that profile has still not yet arrived.

In the summer of 2024, Bolton were once again linked with several players such as Karamoko Dembele, Danny Armstrong and Luke McCowan, but none of those deals materialised.

Even as recently as this winter, a deal for Stromsgodset attacking midfielder Jonas Therkelsen failed to happen despite Evatt publicly speaking of his appreciation of the player and a report after Evatt’s departure saying Bolton were still interested.

The failure to get priority targets over the line as well as disorganised and seemingly haphazard squad building has left Bolton in a situation whereby an overhaul is perhaps required and yet

Schumacher says he isn’t sure how that is possible due to the lack of players actually out of contract this summer.