Bolton Wanderers situation dampens thrill of Derby County opportunity: View | OneFootball

On Saturday afternoon, due to the March international break with several rivals having matches postponed, Derby County had the opportunity to really strengthen their grip on second spot in the automatic promotion places in League One, but the Rams fell short.

An early strike from Northampton Town forward Sam Hoskins was enough to give the Cobblers a 1-0 victory at Sixfields with Paul Warne’s men combusting towards the end as defender Sonny Bradley was sent off after an altercation with Manny Monthe, whilst it has since been confirmed that key attacker Nathaniel Mendez-Laing has suffered a hamstring injury.

This has come as a major boost, both practically and psychologically, to the chasing pack and none more so than Bolton Wanderers, who needed a ‘pick me up’ after heading into the current two-week stoppage on the back of just four victories in their previous 12 league outings.

Whilst Bolton supporters have fairly taken to this renewed sense of optimism, that optimism must remain tempered as there are still major doubts for the Whites to contend with.

Bolton injury situation

There are two seriously major concerns that make Derby’s stumble pretty much irrelevant unless they are solved or recovered with enough time before the end of the season.

Since early February, goalkeeper Nathan Baxter has been unavailable due to a wrist injury he suffered in a 1-1 draw against Barnsley at the Toughsheet Community Stadium. The former Chelsea stopper had big boots to fill to replace James Trafford as Bolton’s number one, but he had been excellent before his injury.

With 12 clean sheets in 28 League One appearances, he has established himself as one of the best goalkeepers in the division, but the 25-year-old is in a race to get back fit with his replacement, Joel Coleman, regularly lambasted by supporters for poor performances. The gap between the pair has been glaring and could still yet prove to have caused irreparable damage to Wanderers’ automatic promotion push.

There is a hope that Baxter, who has returned to the early stages of first-team training this week, may well indeed be fit for the ‘run-in’ but there will still be a risk and question mark hanging over him.

Up at the other end of the pitch, Northern Ireland international striker Dion Charles has been missing since mid-February with the former Accrington Stanley man being forced off with medial ligament damage in a 2-1 defeat of Wycombe Wanderers.

Charles hasn’t played since then but was a part of the Northern Ireland squad during the March international break for friendly matches against Scotland and Romania. He didn’t feature in the match day squad in either of those games but did reportedly begin training again with his national squad teammates.

The return of their key striker, who is nearing 50 goals for the club, could truly be pivotal and decisive factor as things begin to swing back in favour of the Trotters without even playing.

The reason his return is all the more important is the number of other injury absentees as fellow forwards Victor Adeboyejo and Dan Nlundulu remain unavailable. George Johnston, Caleb Taylor and Carlos Mendes Gomes are all also still sidelined.

Failing to take advantage and seize the ‘big moments’

In April 2023, Bolton Wanderers hammered Plymouth Argyle by four goals to nil at Wembley Stadium in the final of the EFL Trophy. However, there is an argument to suggest that is possibly the only time the Trotters have truly come up ‘clutch’, as American parlance would have it, during Ian Evatt’s reign.

Dating all the way back to their remarkable turnaround in 2021 when they leaped from 18th to third in League Two in little over three months; even in that season, when they had the chance to clinch promotion at home to Exeter City on the penultimate day of the season, Bolton suffered a 2-1 defeat to the Grecians and had to wait.

In the early stages of 2022, when all, once again, was lost, Bolton propelled themselves from the bottom-half of League One to towards the play-offs but, in the huge games that mattered, such as MK Dons away or Plymouth at home, they came up short.

Aside from that hammering of Argyle at Wembley last year, Wanderers lost in the play-off semi-finals to Barnsley over two legs and managed just two wins away from home against the top nine in League One; collecting just 14 points from 12 games against the top seven teams in the division.

Their most recent outing, away to Derby just before the March international break, was an excellent example of their profligacy. Wanderers, as Ian Evatt said, were the better side in that game but still contrived to fall to a 1-0 loss at Pride Park. Against teams in the top six so far this season, Bolton have played eight matches but won just two games.

In their final seven games of the season, they travel to seventh placed Stevenage, host league leaders Portsmouth and finish the campaign away at fellow automatic promotion chasers, Peterborough United.

Wanderers’ style of football under Evatt has been relatively easy on the eye but requires patience and perhaps too much complexity for big one-off games with a sophisticated and methodical possession-based approach potentially easier to plan against in a pragmatic setting. Over the course of the season, they should wipe the floor with a lot of, if not most sides, in the third-tier, but the more nuanced and smarter sides tend to prove too awkward for the Trotters.

Whether it is tactical or mentality based, Bolton do have an issue in ‘big’ games and that will need to change immediately in this ‘run-in’ if they are to truly take advantage of Derby’s stumble.