:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/47115536/GettyImages-485579340.0.jpg)
It's nice to see that someone at Bolton Wanderers is still optimistic!
I received another notification from the Bolton Wanderers fan app not too dissimilar from the one which promoted my article 'The Blame Game: A Conspiracy'. I for one am not panicked by our start to the season. The fixture computer has not been kind, which was my conspiracy theory. Additionally Bolton have been playing well even if they have been unable to get that elusive win on the board or score many goals.
This means that I find myself agreeing completely with the Neil Lennon quote above. I think that right now all that Bolton are lacking is a goalscorer. Considering that our defence in five league games has only had one bad outing to think that with a goalscorer in the team we would be in the playoff places is not stupid.
Lets say for arguments sake we had that goalscorer and things were generally better in front of goal for us this season as a consequence. For this hypothetical situation I will add one goal to each Bolton game so far this season.
If this were the case then we would have beaten Derby County 1-0. We still would have lost to Middlesbrough 3-1 but then would have picked up a 1-1 draw at MK Dons. After that we then would have won 2-1 against Nottingham Forest before beating Blackburn Rovers 1-0.
For those keeping count that would be an extra seven points. Bolton currently have three points from their opening five games leaving us second bottom in the league. With those extra seven points we would be on ten points. If we had ten points we would be sat in fifth place due to a goal difference of +1. Now that obviously is highly theoretical, but makes Lennon's assertion that we could easily be in fourth or fifth rather than second bottom all the more reasonable.
Speculation is of course easy and maybe if we had that goalscorer and scored those goals opposition teams would have pushed harder scored more against us and we would only have a couple more points.
But I would tend to agree with Lennon, I am still of the school of thought 'In Lennon we Trust' so that is no surprise. I think Bolton have not been missing much so far this season and we have lost out by relatively small margins. If we were to correct those margins then who knows what could be attainable?