Bolton Wanderers made short-sighted mistake after offloading £15m Nicolas Anelka | OneFootball

Bolton Wanderers sold Nicolas Anelka in January 2008 and made a catalogue of errors that eventually led to their 2012 relegation.

In the January transfer window of 2008, Bolton Wanderers sanctioned the sale of key man Nicolas Anelka to title-challenging Chelsea as they battled against relegation from the Premier League.

Replacing Bolton’s star man was always going to be a difficult task so the idea that an Anelka replacement couldn’t be immediately found wasn’t unrealistic or even unfair but the way in which they allocated the £15 million raised began a spiral that eventually saw their relegation from the top flight in 2012.

With the Trotters competing in the knockout stages of the UEFA Cup as well as trying to preserve their Premier League status, Bolton failed in their mission to adequately replace Anelka that month and instead opted to bolster other areas of the squad.

That mismanagement led to the arrival of one of the worst strikers in Bolton’s history as well as stacking the squad with fairly expensive additions elsewhere, most of which would be deemed as surplus to requirements not long later.

The Nicolas Anelka replacement

Rather than spend the money on someone that could replace the goals or personality of Anelka in attack, Bolton opted to spread the cash and bring in three players for decent fees. Those players were two defenders and a left midfielder who often played left-back.

Gary Cahill joined from Aston Villa, whilst Gretar Steinsson signed from AZ Alkmaar, and Matthew Taylor was bought from Portsmouth as Gary Megson looked to bolster other areas of his side.

That meant the grand Anelka replacement was to be Poland international striker Grzegorz Rasiak on loan from Championship side Southampton, having been deemed surplus to requirements at Saints.

Rasiak went on to make seven appearances for Bolton and failed to score before returning back down to the second tier with a loan spell at Watford and then moving on to Reading before running down his career with a move to AEL Limassol in Cyprus and then several clubs back in Poland.

It wasn’t his fault and it feels so harsh to criticise someone trying to make the best of themselves at a higher level but Bolton had decided to replace a striker who had scored double figures by early January in the Premiership that year and would then go on to be a key man for the league winners a year later with a 29-year-old who had been left out of the starting XI in more games than not for a Southampton side that would narrowly avoid relegation to the third-tier.

Bolton’s journey from Rasiak to N’Gog

Chelsea had been circling Anelka for a while and his eventual departure was not a surprise after he had scored 21 goals in his previous 43 appearances in the Premiership for a Bolton side that had collapsed to the point of needing a great escape towards the end of the 2007/08 campaign.

That, if anything, means that Bolton should have been even more prepared for his eventual departure. Instead, it took them by so much surprise that Rasiak arrived with just a few hours left in the January transfer window – some 20 days after Anelka’s sale.

In the summer of 2008, Bolton broke their club record transfer fee to eventually replace Anelka with the arrival of Johan Elmander from Toulouse for a fee believed to be around £8.2 million.

Elmander, aside from a wondrous and well-remembered goal against Wolverhampton Wanderers as well as around six months of good form during the 2010/11 campaign, was widely viewed as a failure, scoring just 22 goals in 108 appearances for the club.

Ivan Klasnic was an effective off-the-bench option for a few seasons and Daniel Sturridge had an excellent loan spell in 2011 but the next permanent and paid-for addition in attack would be Liverpool striker David N’Gog, joining in August 2011 for a fee believed to be in the region of £4 million.

Following his signing, N’Gog managed to score just three goals in the 2011/12 Premier League campaign as the Trotters were relegated to the Championship after an 11-year spell in the top flight.

Anelka’s sale had been inevitable since his arrival and yet Bolton botched the replacement so badly, and for so long, that it eventually led them to having no meaningful or potent force to battle against the drop when the time finally did come.

It was a short-sighted mistake on Wanderers' part and one they would live to regret.