A few people on here would be wise to read this article a few times..

Excellent stuff.

5 Stars.. Appears we could be a similar age.. I remember all the highs and lows you refer to..

I was at Burnden Park during Division 4 after seeing us in the top flight.. I could do it again.

A brilliant post and well worth 5 stars. People like Reebok Rebel please take note. You too Campo. I don't doubt you're fans who love the club just as we do but this post should bring a touch more perspective to your thoughts. Thanks HateCamel. Top Notch stuff.

Cracking article mate

Puts some of the negative posters into their place. Especially Petrov er - the new ReebokRebel

The best article I have read on this 606 and the old 606 without a shaddow of a doubt...apart from the one that broke the news megson had been sacked

One season we will get relegated that's a fact with all the money about now a days.

I actually think if we did go down under coyle and we kept him in charge then he could build the young attractive pass and move team that he wants.

We all get upset at losing - I even took the shirt off in disgust* after the Sunderland game and it's still in the boot of the car exiled alongside the scarf & programme but I'll still be making my way to T'Reebok tonight after work to fetch me my ticket for Sunday. And they'll still get my full support. - Though away shirt will be on I recon.

Fact is those of us with balanced views on this have seen the bad times.

1-4 in the peeing rain vs Bournemouth in the old Div 3, (the first time I witnessed us beaten live), sticks in the mind for me.

We'll be fine and even if not I agree with the last paragraph from aaron_bwfc.

But here's my real point I guess. Yes the game now is all about money, but I've never lost sight of the fact that in the end; if the glamour of the premier league fell away and we were left having to sell players, I'd still be here. I was here when we were nowhere and I will be when we're back there. I'm a fan of BWFC first and foremost. Without those long dark days I'd never have had the ecstasy of the good times. A lot of people I see posting on here claim vociferously to be die-hards but answer me this, How many of you will be here when eventually the worst does happen? When the money's gone and our best players with it? I read some posters regularly enough to know they won't be.
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i will be...like i said, im from bolton and supoprt them because they are my local team.

i whinge so much because i want to see us do well, i want the european days back again, days we are never going to have back!

the memories of the last night at burnden...i was 12.
i was there, with my cousin and all his mates who were in their mid 20's at the time...il never forget that night. for me as a bolton fan...2 games stick in my mind and i dont think i will ever better them...

byern munich away.
and charlton at burnden - last match.

i may whinge and have a strop...thats just my nature, however...BWFC as a club is tattoo'd to my brain...il always be a fan regardless of what league we are in.

nobody belives me but i mean it.

im becoming disillusioned with the prem a bit anyway i think...hate to admit it, but i am.

Luckly enough, I haven't seen the really bad times - too young.

Although I hate us losing, and would hate going down, I'll support the team wereever we end up.

I have trust in Coyle keeping us up.

Great article thehatecamel.

For all his faults I kinnda feel sorry for coyle, some of the players obviously don't share his love of the game.....Petrov the prime example.

If and when we did go down I honestly believe we could attract some of the best young players in the lower leagues under coyle just for the things that he did with Wilshere and Sturridge alone.

We all know are premier league campaign will come to an end at some point, and if god forbid it's this season, then there's no-one else I would rather have trying to bring us back up than Coyle.

We all know the injuries we've had and that confidence is low. But heading down to the Championship would mean a fresh start for Bwfc, we could go down, heavily reduce all our costs and get a young exciting team, something Coyle has always wanted, having lower wages in the champ means when we get promoted, we can have lower wages like when we got promoted 10 years ago, our wage budget then meant we coul sign Okocha etc. Now we can't. Food for thought obviously, but that's making relegation seem as positive as possible. Coyle Should Not Leave. We need stability, and it's clear that he isn't close to the sack, P Gartside saying he knows we are in transition an he needs time to continue his great work with the club. The board want him, the players want him and the majority of fans want him. I trust the players opinions.

great article but i have to say sturridge and wilshere were very good before they came to bolton. Maybe they just didn't get that run of games at their previous clubs.

their quality would have shone through regardless of who the manager was.

i enjoyed a few visits to burnden park and the reebok and always had a soft spot for bolton.

the last few years though i have seen some sorry bolton fans who demand success. i guess you're right camel in that they haven't witnessed the bad times so they can't really appreciate how well you have done to remain in the top division for so long.

I am too young to remember the bad old days but the people I go to the reebok with were there and have seen it all.

They always remind me of what the bad old days were like and for that reason I never take us being in this league for granted as when you watch the football league show for example, you see just how poor life in the lower leagues would be.

I will how ever be very annoyed if we did go down with a whimper, though I have said coyle would be able to make a decent side with young players in the lower leagues I would rather us change manager who give us more of a backbone rather than getting battered every week.

The low point was the play off second leg v Aldershot & the supermarket.

If you witnessed those, you kind of control yourself when you lose in the Premiership..

Personally I have had a belly full of the premiership..its all about 4/5 clubs with the money and the rest are just making up the nos and hoping to avoid relegation,,,,,It is seriously testing my affection for the game these days and yes I was there in the dark days of Div 4 but still loved going to the match,,cant really say the same anymore.

A great article. HateCamel.

I am waiting for a "just because we were in the fourth division doesn't mean we should be happy to go down" type comment from one of the significant number of planks who populate this board.

I agree with oneafter.

i have lost all love for the prem - i love bolton, i really do, its odd to love a football team, an allegiance that these days we have no connection with, our money goes to pay for high earning folks who do very little to put back in the community, mainly because it has to be re-invested so that we can keep competing at a high level.

i dont watch MOTD any more, its boring, anyone below tottenham hasnt really got a chance. People point to everton when they qualified for CL, etc. but in the most these are flukes and unexpected. The top four or five will remain, they have a monopoloy on the money, they earn it, they spend it, they earn more, and spend more.

This isnt the entire reason for falling out with the league, i am a capitalist minded person so i would agree with it. But the other reasons include, silly rules, fairplay, cheating, media bias (which i understand the reasons).

The only football i seem to watch these days is crappy FA Cup where i hope someone like Tamworth beat west brom, and champions league, where the quality of football is marvellous! its such a shame but nothing us mere fans can do

COYWM, lets have reet scrap with stoke!

Largehat...i take it that that is targeted at me?

i don’t have anything against the people who were there in the 4th division...i just feel that certain older Bolton fans look down there noses at all these 'young whippersnappers' who come to watch the club now as well becasue we also was not there (totally ruling out the fact that none of us were actually old enough to be there anyway...totaly voiding the argument)

a couple of the older fans i have had the opportunity of standing near at games in the past are very opinionated but will not listen to any other arguments because they feel they are above any fan who has not experienced the 4th division. i cant stand having some old man telling me (this happened at Wembley) that you 'young uns' should support the team instead of whinging...we have had a bad day etc etc 'you should have been there in the dark days etc' - i explained that im allowed my opinion like the other 15,000 or so fans leaving at the same time as me and he got pretty gobby when i called him a hypocrite - as he too was leaving the ground at the same time as me...

the issue i take with them is that - yes, respect for being there lads. they however, seem to be under the impression that younger fans have jumped on a bandwagon and only supported Bolton as we were doing pretty well over the past 15 or so years - this is not true. I myself and im sure thousands of other bolton fans will still be there in the championship IF we get relegated this season. what they don’t understand is that we are bolton fans because we are Bolton lads - thats the ultimate bottom line.

yes we would possibly whine about it a lot more because we have been fed success, we have been to Europe and cup finals, semi cup finals and play offs etc. i am used to seeing us (in the football pyramid scheme of things as a relatively 'big' club...so maybe a trip down to the lower leagues would (after all the whining and resentment that we are not and never will be part of the UK’s footballing elite has been removed from my system) be a good shock for us to have - maybe we would appreciate success better, possibly even enjoy the ride of having a smaller but more passionate band of followers...who knows, we don’t because we have never been there...

time will be a good test of this i suppose...

Rebel - its not the notion of your opinion, it is how it is generated. its a perspective thing. Older gen fans have a much better perspective of our situation, and they understand that we are punching above our weight being in the prem.

They are ultimately more grateful for the times, because they have seen the bad times. Much like an african child would be grateful for a cold pie, yet we would most likely complain... same principle. And the older generation have pop bellys like african children aswell! haha.

i dont think you would support us less if we were playing brighton next week, not for one minute, but we should be more grateful that we have had genius' like hierro, djorkaeff, beckham, ronaldo, silva, rooney on our football pitch.. rather than Joe Bloggs, or david nugent!

Rebel - its not the notion of your opinion, it is how it is generated. its a perspective thing. Older gen fans have a much better perspective of our situation, and they understand that we are punching above our weight being in the prem.

They are ultimately more grateful for the times, because they have seen the bad times. Much like an african child would be grateful for a cold pie, yet we would most likely complain... same principle. And the older generation have pop bellys like african children aswell! haha.
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cant really disagree with that...kind of what i was trying to say

Rebel why would any of us older fans resent you for being too young to remember those days? We might be a bit jealous (especially those os uf with a bit more waist and a bit less hair than then ) but other than that I for one am quite pleased that there is an entire generation of trotters fans who know nothing of the kind of pain and fear we experienced then.

All we're asking you to do is realise that the Premiership is NOT all there is to football OR to the Trotters. Some say if we were relegated it would be a disaster and they're right BUT make no mistake the trotters WOULD go on in one form or another and there would still be a game for us to watch.

I'm not going to pull out my pipe and slippers while saying ' When I was a lad we 'ad tuppence ha'penny for t'match and some chips and came 'ome wi'change' BUT there are just as many highs and lows in football at pub level as there are in the prem.

What matters is the game, not the location. I still get a smile on my face remembering Frank Worthington playing for us in the old Div 2 and seeing us clean almos everybody's clocks in that division. The goal against Blackburn that put us up to the top flight is a deathbed memory. So are those play off finals, the one we lost against Watford and the one we won against Preston. The game against Reading, still n many trotter fans all time top ten games.

Beating spurs 6-1 when we were a second tier team in the cup and many other nights just as good against less glamorous opposition. Mansfield Town anyone? Been there on a cold Tuesday in February and there were probably no more than 2000 people there in total but the atmosphere would have put OT to shame.

I personally think Owen can turn it round and keep us in the prem and that he will but I would also say that if we DID go down while we might not be playing the likes of Man U and so on on a regular basis we'd have just as much if not more fun playing Burnley, Blackpool and the other championship teams. there'd still be rivalry, still passion and the game itself would be just as important to us fans as when we played in Europe. I know you will understand this Rebel but perhaps you just need to be reminded of it. The issue here isn't whether or not we play in the prem or the old div 4. It's about the fact that we play at all and that Bolton Wanderers will always hold a special place in OUR hearts even if it's not in the players.

Rebel, my post, just like HateCamel's article, wasn't aimed at anyone in particular.

Wembley 2011 was one of the worst days in the history of BWFC. I personally rate it as in the top 5 worst days of my life. At half time in the concourse I heard a bloke who appeared to be in his late 40s/early 50s say he was through with BWFC after this. I felt like launching into him but didn't. People were in shock and hurt and said a lot of stupid things. It's why there were stories of BWFC fans scuffling in the ground - emotions were running high. So you should take anything that was said on that day with a huge pinch of salt.

I've tried to tell you this before, but there isn't a "I was there in the 4th division" clique at the club or on 606. Being a fan since the 1980s or earlier just gives moaning about relegation from the Premier League a context you unfortunately don't have - that's just the way it is. My happiest time as a Wanderers fan was the White Hot years. Mysteriously vanishing from school between RE and science, stuffing my uniform in a rucksack and running to Burnden to get the coach to Highbury, to watch us knock the holders out of the FA Cup. (And people wonder why I love Owen Coyle...)

You have to contrast this with your whining about going on European tours, saying you won't support the players because they don't deserve it, and seriously examine why you get short shrift from posters on this forum at times. It's not a generational thing.

Too many on this board can only relate to the Reebok years and is particular the last 10 years as a prem club..Yes there are those of us who recall the div 4 days and I go back a lot further having seen my first match in 1969...The fact is that this club has come a long long way in the past decade or so but there is something seriously wrong when the premiership regarded as the be all. The financial implications of not being in that league is sucking the life out of the game ..In the old days relegation usually meant no more than a drop in gates and a player might move on...now its considered a domesday scenario and for that I blame the FA and clubs like City and Chelsea who have behaved like spoilt rich kids kids who have been given a brand new toy for xmas that they didnt deserve...its all about me me me!!!

You have to contrast this with your whining about going on European tours, saying you won't support the players because they don't deserve it, and seriously examine why you get short shrift from posters on this forum at times. It's not a generational thing.

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fair enough, i do agree

been talking about getting the whole 'europe' thing back with a trip to see england away next year. its somthing that i suppose, now ive seen it and been there...i want it every season.

its the same as the analogy with the pie above, ive only ever really seen us in the 1st/2nd div (championship and prem) and we have always been on the 'up' during this time really...

if you give a child sweets every day for 5 years, then tell him he cant have them as much anymore, the child will have a stop, before perhaps realising that sweets were not that good afterall and crisps are indeed better...

Does anyone else on here miss the smell of Bovril on a frosty night at at Burnden....these whippersnappers dont know they are born

Lovely words OP. A mixture of Utopian idealism and enough nostalgia to make my girlfriend cry but lacks realism.

We got promoted in 2001 because the club and it's fans wanted it. If we didn't, we could have always "thrown" a game here and there to ensure it didn't happen and I'm sure we could be a happy C'ship or lower side as we speak, but we're not due to a word called ambition.

To ensure we have stayed here for 10 years, we have paid players Prem wages, paid the manager a Prem wage, developed Prem facilities and accrued a Prem size debt.

The Prem broadacsting money alone has now overtaken the 2010 GDP of Sierra Leonne and Zimbabwe.

Are you suggesting we settle for relegation and stay loyal to Coyle and poor spineless performances and give up Prem status without a fight?

Coyle earns more than a million quid a year, Do you think he would be happy to trudge along with us for a 100k/year if we got relegated?

We're not down yet and our board will do whatever it takes to stop relegation from happening, even if that means parting ways with Coyle.

Take ambition away from a club and you don't have one anymore.

"if you give a child sweets every day for 5 years, then tell him he cant have them as much anymore, the child will have a stop, before perhaps realising that sweets were not that good afterall and crisps are indeed better..."


You slap the child's legs and call them ungrateful. You hope they learn and remember that experience..

When they are 26 with a child, you have to ask if they had enough slapped legs??