week 2 opponent review Bolton

By: j | August 21st, 2008

After last weeks brilliant start of the campaign, the Magpies return home to St James` Park to face Bolton who defeated the newly-promoted Stoke City 3-1.

Bolton’s Gary Megson has done a bit of an overhaul with the club in trying to return a bit of the firepower that left when Nicolas Anelka scampered out of town. Armed with a sizable war-chest this transfer season, attacking power seems to be the order of the day and they certainly appear to have spent wisely.

In review of their off-season signing it appears the club has put behind their relegation-threatened past and going on the attack with flourish. While they made an obvious blunder of not putting Danny Guthrie’s name on a permanent contract and the loss of El-Hadji Diouf to Roy Keane was unavoidable, the balance of their decisions were of a similar attacking style and power. Eschewing to a higher pedigree player than last year, they quickly nabbed Toulouse’s slick striker Johan Elmander for a tidy £8.2 m, Birmingham City’s midfielder Fabrice Muamba for £4m and Levante’s mercurial winger, Mustapha Riga who will absolutely drive defenders mad once he is fully acclimated with the Premier League.

In the opening match of the campaign against newly promoted Stoke City, Bolton played a plain vanilla 4-4-2, with few surprises but with discipline and precise results. New man Johan Elmander was the true man-of-the-match in my opinion as his movement away from the ball caused endless problems for the Stoke City back-line and will be a key to watch. As indicated in practice reports, the debut of Mustapha Riga is imminent and work-rate and fitness will be the key to keep up with him. In the briefest of summaries, Bolton looks to be an exciting offense-orientated attack that while lacking bench strength, will be able to net quite a few goals.

In part two of the review I will go over Kevan Keegan’s plans for the match.