Five Things: Bolton Wanderers 1-2 Ipswich Town - League One Awaits

1) Unforgiveable Lack of Effort

We, as Bolton Wanderers fans, know that we aren’t entitled to anything. We aren’t entitled to watching Barcelona-style football and we do not expect anything more than our players doing their absolute best.

There are many talking points from yesterday and many of them surround the off-field dramas that seem to follow Wanderers around but for me the main problem is an unforgiveable lack of effort from the team. Any gaps in quality (and lets face it, there are loads) should be plugged by sheer graft but yesterday was completely devoid of any.

The lads may well believe that they tried, but from a supporters point of view this is definitely questionable.

There are several culprits, namely Sammy Ameobi, Will Buckley and Andrew Taylor, but they are only emblematic of the obvious - that they appear to have given up on survival.

2) Unforgiveable Lack of Quality

This comes from the chairman. Whilst fully entitled to run the club how he sees fit, he (and his superagent spawn) has bestowed manager Phil Parkinson with the worst squad that I have seen in 25 years of watching Wanderers.

This isn’t the manager’s fault. This is fully on Ken and his lack of willingness to invest in quality. Money talks in this league and you need to be prepared to spend in order to simply compete. Instead we have spent far too long scrabbling round in the bargain aisle and that has led to the current mess. Having to put up with the likes of Will Buckley and Mark Beevers is something that we have no choice about. We are stuck with the tripe that nobody else wants, because they’re cheap.

3) Unforgiveable Lack of Ambition

This one is definitely on Phil Parkinson.

Whilst Anderson has dealt PP a duff hand, there can be little question that he has been completely unable to get a tune out of the side that he has put together.

Welcome Ipswich Town to the Reebok after the great result at QPR last week should’ve been the time to put ourselves on the front foot and go after the game. Instead, we were treated to another home performance where we are barely even second-best in the fight.

There can be little argument to keeping the same eleven as performed so well against QPR, but to arrange them in such a manner only showed that the manager cannot adjust what he has to give us the best chance of a result.

The manner in which Erhun Oztumer came on and immediately gave us a different attacking dimension would, at another club and with another manager, mean that he would automatically be called to start the next game. However, we know better than that and it would be a huge shock if he was to start against Middlesbrough on Tuesday.

4) More Defensive Woes

With Mark Beevers having possibly the worst defensive game of his Wanderers career alongside the equally poor Andrew Taylor, it was obvious to all that we would likely struggle against the agile, strong and mobile Quaner and his chums.

It baffles me how, sitting in the East Stand, you can spend 15 minutes pre-match watching Steve Parkin lay up high balls for the back four to practice heading away unchallenged. How many free headers do you reckon the back four get in a game? Not many. It seems daft when you look at their attempts at heading in a match situation given how unrealistic their practicing gets.

5) Please Someone Bring an End to This Mess

Being honest, to see footballers going without pay doesn’t really bother me too much, but it does bother me seeing honest and hard-working staff go without. These are often, in the first case, Wanderers fans and they don’t deserve to be treated like this.

Ken Anderson and his mates have followed disaster after disaster and that we approach another week where the club’s future is in doubt is an absolute disgrace.

So where does all this leave us?

There may be a situation where we have to face the fact that Bassini represents our best chance of avoiding oblivion and I’ve even seen some of the usual idiots on Twitter claiming that he deserves to be given a fresh start at Bolton. He may even end up owning the club but let’s be honest he’s not the sort of person that you’d want running your club.

We can only hope that there’s some secret other group hiding in the shadows waiting to swoop. I wish they’d get a move on.