Bolton Wanderers 2-3 Cardiff City: Immediate Reaction

You know things are going badly when a rubbish football highlights programme makes a laughing stock of your club by proclaiming one of your players as having had the 'worst miss of the day.'

But that was the case for Bolton Wanderers this evening, as Football On 5 just outed Stephen Dobbie for exactly that feat.

The award for today's worst @Football_League miss must go to Stephen Dobbie. Join us from 9pm LIVE on @Channel5_TV https://t.co/pQmk6r8Q83

— Football On 5 (@FootballOn5) December 5, 2015

That miss is awful, and Stephen Dobbie is a terrible footballer, but what makes the miss worse is that Cardiff immediately broke down the other end of the pitch and Casado got sent off. Dobbie has no pace, he can't pass, and he keeps taking free-kicks that are a complete waste. Who is allowing him to take free-kicks? The only thing he's done for us all season is score a lucky last minute goal and then get injured.

If Dobbie is anywhere near our first-team squad next week, then Neil Lennon deserves shooting. Would Jamie Thomas, Alex Samizadeh or Kaiyne Woolery have missed that sitter? Arguably not, and I'd certainly hope not. I want Dobbie out of my club.

Dobbie's awfulness highlights a general issue that when the players on the pitch aren't quite doing it, there's absolutely no option off the bench. Today we saw Dobbie and Emile Heskey thrown on when we needed a goal. Dobbie is, at best, a League Two midfielder, while Heskey should have retired about three years ago. Our bench is totally void of anyone that can offer something different or do something unexpected - so surely, surely one of the youngsters has to be worth a gamble now?

Wanderers are now winless in 13 league matches and have only one victory in the last 25 in all competitions. And just in case that didn't sound bad enough, next Saturday's visit to promotion chasing Hull City will mark exactly three months since Bolton last won a match.

Today's game with Cardiff completely typified our season. We missed a shed-load of chances, then allow the opposition to score far too easily through some calamitous defending. That said, we actually played fairly well today, should have been leading at half-time and we really should have won it, but we remain totally incapable of putting teams away. Oh, and Gary Madine scored an absolute screamer - where did that come from?!

Another major problem is our concerning lack of discipline. Jose Casado today became the FOURTH Bolton defender to receive a red card this season, following the trend set by Prince, Derik Osede and Dorian Dervite - as well as Jay Spearing - in taking an early bath. He'll no doubt be dropped never to be seen again, like fellow full-backs Lawrie Wilson and Francesco Pisano.

Luckily the teams around us at the bottom of the league are just as bad as us, and we remain only four points from safety. Although we'll get annihilated at Hull next weekend, but as long as Dobbie is nowhere to be seen then I'll be alright with it.