Hiring Chris Wilder Could Be a Big Mistake

I guess I should caveat the entirety of this article with a bit of blunt honesty straight from the off, I practically have no idea who Chris Wilder is.

Until Northampton Town were named Champions last weekend I had never heard the name before and now here he is a league winner and the bookies favourite, and seemingly the club's first choice, to take over the reigns of Bolton Wanderers this summer.

He seems to me like a race horse who appears out of no where to speed past the leading horse, this horse being Phil Brown, in the final furlong to reach victory. His name has come a little out of the blue.

As I said, I know practically nothing of Wilder. I know he managed Oxford for a while before leaving for the Cobblers, I know he's smashed League Two this year after Northampton had some sticky financial problems of their own earlier in the year and I know a little bit of his management style thanks to this piece from Tom Reed.

Oh, and that he wears a snazzy coat on the sidelines, which is good in my books.

Apart from that I know nowt. Sweet fa. I don't really know his style, how he likes his teams to play, how good he is tactically, if he can adapt mid game, how he deals with players, how shrewd he is in the transfer market and if he can even manage at a higher level than the one he is currently in.

I don't know an awful lot, so my belief that Wanderers hiring Wilder to be their new boss isn't based on how good or not he is at managing football teams. If he does indeed come here I will back him until the hilt and hope for every success and, who knows? Maybe he will turn out to be a brilliant appointment, a man who stabilises a turbulent club and gets them moving in an upwards direction.

He could be ace. But it is a massive risk.

I don't want to seem to be getting on the backs of the new establishment so early but I personally feel we need to be vigilant and scrutinise every decision they make at every level of the club so we don't get into the type of mess we were in again.

The choice of who the new manager is isn't exactly as that high of a risk compared to wage bills, budget cuts ect, but it is a decision that is going to directly effect how well Bolton do in League One next season and thus the immediate future of the club.

I have been fairly impressed with Anderson and Holdsworth's words so far and if they believe Wilder is the right choice and are confident in him, then I'll go along with it.

But, personally, this just stinks of the same mistake we've made when hiring our three previous managers.

Promising young coaches with great reputations and an untold amount of promise. Owen Coyle, Dougie Freedman, Neil Lennon, all came here on highs after doing good, great, jobs with their previous clubs and were all considered to be shrewd picks and big coups for the club.

However, all of them came here on the back of only one good job, all of them were relatively young for a manager and all of them had very little experience, either in management as a whole or just in the Championship.

I want to reiterate that this is nothing against Wilder and I'm not judging a man before we even hire him, but it just feels to me that Bolton Wanderers are failing to learn from their mistakes. Once again we're going for promise rather than experience.

Experience isn't neccersery, of course, just look at Wigan this year, but for us at least there is a very worrying pattern of us hiring young managers and practically ruining them.

I hope it doesn't go like that with Chris Wilder, but there will be no surprises if it does.