Steven Schumacher must axe player with over 100 Bolton Wanderers apps this summer | OneFootball

Steven Schumacher will want a rejuvenation of the squad at Bolton Wanderers this summer and Kyle Dempsey should be one on the way out.

As Bolton Wanderers head into yet another summer having failed to reach their objective of gaining promotion from League One, there will have to be changes at the club and one of them should be the departure of former Gillingham captain Kyle Dempsey.

It is the first summer of the Schumacher era and the first summer since 2019 whereby recruitment and squad construction will not be done to serve Ian Evatt. Wanderers already have some decisions to make due to Evatt’s desire to exclusively play without wingers in a 3-5-2 or a 3-4-2-1 shape.

Schumacher has already expressed his feelings towards areas of the squad that require the most surgery, lamenting the fact that the Whites do not have enough, if any, actual out-and-out wingers in the squad.

However, issues go deeper than just the squad construction and the Trotters, who have senior players such as Nathan Baxter, Ricardo Santos and Gethin Jones out of contract this summer, will have to take serious steps to move into a new era.

One of those significant steps should well be the sale of Dempsey, who joined the club in the winter transfer window of 2022 and has been something of a fan favourite at the Toughsheet Community Stadium, but his injury record means he can’t be relied upon to be a fulcrum of a side that want to challenge for the top two spots in the third-tier.

Dempsey’s inconsistency and injuries

When fit and available and at his absolute best, Dempsey can be a menace for the opposition with bursts through the midfield always marking him out as a goalscoring threat.

His endeavour and tenacity, matched with aggression both on and off the ball, also makes him stand out for supporters wanting to cling on to someone who is giving their all for the cause.

However, when not at his best and with a lot of his best work actually done off the ball, he can go missing in matches even when fit and available – and that has often seen him drift down the Wanderers pecking order behind the likes of Paris Maghoma last season and Jay Matete this.

This season has been a story of injury for Dempsey, though, and he raced himself back to full fitness ahead of schedule before the end of this campaign when an injury sustained in January was expected to see him miss the rest of the season.

He has missed 30 games through injury for Bolton this season, missing out on the squad that shared a 1-1 draw with Peterborough United at the weekend due to a fresh issue.

It was five the season before and seven games missed through injury in the 2022/23 campaign, having already missed seven of the 18 games that he was available for at the end of the 2021/22 season following his move from Gillingham in January 2022.

Dempsey’s style of play lends itself to supporters getting on his side, but there has always been a worry over his lack of quality and now another injury issue will surely make Schumacher doubtful whether the 29-year-old can contribute enough next season to merit a place in his squad.

Bolton’s squad overhaul

There has been talk, mainly from supporters, about overhauling this current squad after about 18 months of stagnation and decline, but Schumacher has admitted he doesn’t know how realistic that is due to how few players are out of contract this summer.

Youngsters David Abimbola and Sonny Sharples-Ahmed have come into the first-team towards the end of the season but, again, it does seem as though they are a way off yet being able to regularly contribute in the first-team.

Max Conway won Crewe Alexandra’s Player of the Year award for this season and the left-back will likely return from his loan spell in Cheshire to the first-team at Bolton, and he has a good chance of being first-choice left-back given those squad construction issues, meaning there is no out-and-out left-back at the club.

Schumacher commented about Bolton’s business last summer, also seemingly frustrated by the number of so-called ‘number tens’ brought in with the likes of Klaidi Lolos and John McAtee signed before Joel Randall’s arrival in the winter window to go alongside Carlos Mendes Gomes and Aaron Collins.

Bolton invested relatively heavily this season on the likes of Lolos, McAtee and Randall as well as Jordi Osei-Tutu and Szabolcs Schon, so how much money is available for Schumacher and incoming Sporting Director Fergal Harkin to spend is in doubt.