It's A Results Business

Bolton's manager used to be Sam Allardyce, whose strengths were man-management, organisation and preparation. He begged, borrowed and stole a collection of players and moulded them into a team, designing a system to suit the abilities of the men at his disposal. He would take them to the grounds of the 'moneybags' clubs and would often come away with a result. For four consecutive seasons he had them challenging for a place in Europe.
Did this make him popular ? Not with the press or the self-appointed football elite, who contemptuously labelled him a long ball merchant. Even some Bolton fans seemed to resent his success, complaining about the style of football. But then there's no pleasing some people.
Now Bolton have Owen Coyle in the manager's seat, acknowledged by most people as a nice guy with lots of enthusiasm who wants to play attractive football. At first his arrival galvanised the club, but the semi-final rout last season initiated a downward spiral which not even the summer break has come close to halting.
The consensus of opinion here seems to have been that this has been caused by injuries, difficult fixtures and bad luck, and that their troubles would be over when Stuart Holden came back into the team. Holden is certainly one of the club's best players, but Bolton have never before been a one-man team, even in the days of a gifted player like Jay Jay Okocha.
Many Boltonians are looking forward to the visit of Chelsea the way that a condemned man anticipates his walk to the gallows, and few are expecting anything from the game apart from a consolidation of their place at the foot of the premiership. Coyle knows that results will have to pick up sooner rather than later or, nice guy or not, he will go the same way as Allardyce's successor Sammy Lee.