Muamba Blasts Bolton - Who Cares?

The support shown by former Bolton Wanderers legends like John McGinlay, Kevin Davies and Tony Kelly of late has been superb. However, the club's plight is also providing an unfortunate opportunity for other former players to offer their unwanted and unhelpful views.

What Fabrice Muamba has to say about anything is generally not worth listening to, but his latest bout of mindfarts to BBC Newsbeat were beyond pointless.

As an example, I'll begin with this comment regarding his Wanderers viewing habits:

"I watched an FA Cup game and I had to turn it off after 20 minutes because it was that hard to watch. I saw them play against Brentford but left after 35 minutes."

Is this really the message that a former professional footballer should be sending out to young supporters that might, in their youthful ignorance, look up to or respect him? If you don't want to watch a team then don't bother, but don't be so ignorant to suggest that because your team is losing, or isn't very good, you shouldn't support them.

Truthfully, anyone who turns off any match after 20 or 35 minutes either 1) doesn't like football, 2) doesn't know anything about football, or 3) is not a fan of the club they are watching. I suspect in Muamba's case it's options 2 and 3. And I suspect this scene didn't last for long:

Come on @OfficialBWFC pic.twitter.com/VZrAAyxpFs

— fabrice muamba (@fmuamba) January 9, 2016

We all know that Bolton are pretty awful this season, so how is some guy who played for us for a couple of years - and, need I remind you, wasn't very good - saying he turns off matches in the first half of any use to anybody? I would advise Muamba that if he feels this way then he should stick to watching Arsenal and declaring how much he loves Johann Djourou - a player who was even worse than Muamba - on Twitter, and keep his mouth shut when it comes to anything related to Bolton.

Muamba also dips into the dodgy issue of how the club got into so much debt, telling BBC Newsbeat:

"How do you reach £170 million of debt? When you hit £50 million alarm bells should start going off. I'm not here to point the finger but how did it get this bad? You wonder if we were blindsided all the time or were we spending more than we had?"

Well it doesn't take a mathematician to deduce that we clearly were spending more than we had, as we're now massively in debt. Part of the reason that we are in this mess is that we overspent on players who weren't very good - namely spending £5 million and who-knows-how-much a week in wages on a dreadful midfielder who then sapped the club of money as it supported him through his medical troubles. So maybe it'd be nice if showed a bit more support for the club, or just left us alone.

Oh, and on the topic of football finances, we certainly don't want to see Muamba involved in advising us.

@PeterJeffery7 @BBCNewsbeat @BBCNews what's the point having an accountant at the football club?

— fabrice muamba (@fmuamba) January 18, 2016

Although maybe he could have helped us manage the books, as he told BBC Newsbeat:

"We sold Gary Cahill to Chelsea for £7 million and I'm not sure if we invested all that money into the squad. If we didn't them I'm sure that could have been paid towards the debt."

Two points here.. Firstly, he doesn't know and nor do we, so why bother saying anything? And secondly, isn't the power of hindsight wonderful? You can just imagine what players and the fans would have been saying at the time if the Bolton board had re-invested that Cahill money back into the club and its debt.

Muamba then goes on to lay into the current management and squad, of whom he says "some clearly care about the club because they live near the stadium" - what does that even mean? He told BBC Newsbeat:

"Regardless of how small your budget is, your job as a coach or manager is to lift them up and make sure they can perform at the best of their ability. Half of that squad aren't even performing at the level I know they can play."

I'm not pretending that Neil Lennon is getting the best out of our players, but how Muamba in any qualifies to have a dig at him or our current side I don't understand and fail to see what purpose it offers - other than keeping him in the limelight. Maybe when he has done some coaching and has footballing insight worth listening to, I'll begin to listen. But I won't be holding my breath on that one.

I'll leave you with this nugget of brilliance from Muamba:

"At the end of the day football is about leading boys and making sure they know what they're doing."

Is it? Maybe that's where Fabrice was going wrong.