Steven Schumacher has to continue bucking Bolton Wanderers trend that’s been an issue since Allardyce | OneFootball

Becoming tactically flexible and more pragmatic has been key to Schumacher's early success at Bolton and those are positive signs for the Trotters.

Steven Schumacher has enjoyed a magnificent start to his time at Bolton Wanderers following his appointment in late-January when he replaced Ian Evatt.

Schumacher’s Whites came from a goal down to defeat League One’s champions-elect Birmingham City 3-1 earlier this week to earn their fourth victory in five league games – with all four wins requiring a turnaround.

Whilst that may be an issue moving forward, as consistently going behind in matches is not something you can build a sustainable promotion challenge on, it does highlight tactical flexibility and general, for want of a more modern-day and sophisticated phrase, ‘backbone’ to a Bolton side that had clearly lacked it in big games in recent seasons.

That tactical flexibility is also something Bolton fans have been crying out for in years gone by, with an attack-minded approach now balanced against some effective pragmatism – following on from years of ideologues getting certain impressive results, but eventually their own stubbornness and belief costing them in the end at the club.

From Big Sam to Evatt - Bolton's list of struggling managers

The glory years of Bolton came in the 1920s and the 1950s, but the 2000s produced their modern-day-high point of four successive top eight finishes in the top-flight, a few domestic cup runs and runs into Europe, too.

That came as a result of the then-still-progressive, and yet pragmatic, effective management of Sam Allardyce, who, as all good managers of the time did, selected the style and team based on a ‘horses for courses’ approach.

Since the departure of Allardyce in 2007, Bolton have sifted through a few fairly average managers in the dugout, as well as some that showed promise, but were too wedded to their own ideology and philosophy to make things work on a longer-term basis.

The case in point would have to be Evatt, who helped Bolton climb out of League Two at the first time of asking amid previously dire financial circumstances. Their repeated failures in similar ways in League One often felt like Groundhog Day for Trotters’ supporters.

Dougie Freedman was much the same with an insistence on a generally dire and actually ineffective possession-based style, whilst Neil Lennon (pictured), Keith Hill and Owen Coyle can all be criticised for a fundamental tactical naivety in their often gung-ho and yet, due to a lack of repeatable patterns play, once again ineffective football - albeit Coyle had some relative success for a period.

The one man in the 18 years since Allardyce that can be said to have had tangible success was Phil Parkinson with his more reactive and defensive approach, but even that itself was dogmatic and drove some fans away, such was its lack of enterprise – despite gaining automatic promotion from League One.

Schumacher’s philosophy brings balance to Bolton

The heading says ‘Schumacher’s philosophy’ but the overarching point is that Schumacher’s philosophy doesn’t necessarily exist, aside from the obvious fundamentals of winning matches and entertaining fans.

It doesn’t have to be done in a specific certain way, as long as it gets done – and that isn’t to say that Schumacher has brought with him a more defensive style, but far from it.

There is now a variety to the way Bolton play whereby they actually now look dangerous when they haven’t got the ball as well as when they have got it, because they are able to transition quickly, rather than the constant reset and overly deliberate build-up of recent seasons.

We are still just over a month into the Schumacher reign, so time, as ever, will tell whether this is something that will continue to work and pay off for Wanderers. But, in the early stages, the former Plymouth Argyle is bringing balance to Bolton's that has been sorely missed for the best part of two decades.