Bolton Wanderers saw side of player that Leeds and Middlesbrough will find hard to believe | OneFootball

Michael Ricketts shot to fame with the Trotters, before his career came tumbling down

Leeds United and Middlesbrough fans will scratch their eyes at the sight of Michael Ricketts firing in the goals at Bolton Wanderers.

While he misfired during his time at Elland Road and The Riverside, the frontman was a force to be reckoned with during his time with the Trotters, and earned a reputation as one of the fiercest strikers in the land.

Having initially caught the eye for Walsall, it was with Wanderers where he really caught fire, and became the first player for the club in over 35 years to be capped by England after a terrific run of form domestically.

With plenty expecting big things from the attacking phenom, that Bolton spell would prove to be the high point of his career, with Boro and United both failing to get the best out of a player who was tipped for the top, but failed to make the grade.

Michael Ricketts forced Middlesbrough move through after stellar Bolton Wanderers form

Wanderers were a team on the up at the turn of the Millennium, with Sam Allardyce leading the side to the Premier League in the 2000/2001 season, thanks in no small part to the menace they had in the final third.

Ricketts was plundering goals left, right and centre as the Trotters worked their way into the second tier play-offs, with 22 goals in the regular season helping keep momentum going throughout the campaign.

The forward then netted in the second leg of the play-off semi-final against West Brom, before adding gloss to the scoreline in a 3-0 win over Preston North End to help his side reach the promised land, and lay the foundations for a world where Jay-Jay Okocha, Youri Djorkaeff and Stelios Giannakopoulos all called Bolton home.

His stock was already high as he approached the top flight for the first time, and boy did he know it. The swagger that the forward played with in that first season played a huge part in keeping the Trotters above the relegation zone, with Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United all coming a cropper against him in the early part of the campaign.

That cocksure attitude would soon come back to haunt Wanderers though, with the striker’s attention turned elsewhere for the second-half of the campaign, as he went goalless for the final 17 matches of the season.

That included his maiden international cap - which would prove to be his only appearance for the Three Lions - as the clamour for clubs to snap up the promising young buck continued into the summer.

After that international recognition, things were different. The goals had dried up and the player obviously thought he was destined for bigger and better things, with Allardyce summing up the situation a decade later: "It's always sad to lose a player you feel you've helped. I took great pleasure in him playing for England, but I've got great dissatisfaction with what's happened to Michael since.

"They [his agent] told him what he could get and where he could get it, what other clubs might do for him. That has taken his focus away from what should have been his only aim — scoring goals for this football club.

"If he'd carried on as he was going, we'd have benefited more financially and Michael would have benefited because, with respect to Boro, a bigger club would have taken him."

Middlesbrough move signaleds the beginning of the end for Michael Ricketts's top flight career

Despite his slump in form, Bore were still prepared to stump up £3.5 million for the player in the January of 2003, with the hope being that they could resurrect the striker’s career.

The trajectory to the top had taken a detour via the north east, but while many may have been tempted to kick on and use The Riverside switch as a springboard, Ricketts lived up to his name with a serious of woeful performances for his new side.

The once deadly frontman had lost his touch, with three goals in 32 Premier League games on Teesside summing up a dismal period of his career, with things about to get a whole lot worse.

From being a target for some of the Premier League’s elite, Ricketts was now considered a busted flush, with no top flight willing to take a chance on him after his recent exploits.

Leeds United thought they could get the best out of his talents, but 25 goalless matches for the Elland Road outfit proved otherwise, as an out of shape, and out of form forward lumbered around, seemingly happy to take his paycheque each week.

This couldn’t be the same player who tore Premier League defences apart just three years before? The same player that got international recognition? This was a lost soul, who had evidently lost his love for the game.

And so it proved, as Ricketts soon went from pillar to post trying to get a game, with loan spells at Stoke, Cardiff and Burnley failing to reignite that fire in his belly, before eventually turning back to where it all began, with Walsall taking him on seven years after his departure from the Bescot Stadium.

The forward’s story can be seen as a transfer gone wrong for Boro and Leeds, but in reality it is a tale of a player being led the wrong way by his agents, and getting his comeuppance on the most public of stages.

Bolton cashed in, as did Ricketts himself, but to the detriment of his playing career, with his potential fizzling out almost as quickly as it had emerged, before calling it a day at the age of 31.