Here We Are Again: Bolton Wanderers and the Weight of the Play-Offs

Here we are again, then. The playoffs await us, and all we can really do is hope. There’s no amount of psyching yourself up you can do for these types of games. The nerves so many of us deny are there, masked with “just another game”, but you’d be lying to yourself if you said they weren’t there. 

With the loss to Luton in the final game of the season confirming we’ll play the home leg first, there can only be one game plan. Win at all costs. We’ve seen this team repeatedly show unbelievable character, defying the odds, defying belief even at times, and we know they’re capable. Knockout football is a cruel environment, and as many of us have said, it all comes down to the day.

It really is time we got ourselves out of League One. There’s only so many times we can feign excitement for another trip to Burton, and only so many Preview Shows we can do on The Fanzone with Red All Over… a club like Bolton Wanderers don’t belong here, but there’s no divine right to getting out of this division, ask Sunderland, ask Ipswich, ask the countless teams who spent years in a cesspit of disappointing seasons, of not quites, of almosts.

This season hasn’t been quite what we all hoped for, we know that, they know that, but it can certainly become one we’ll remember for a long time. There’s the chance for players to go down in history, to become a part of the fabric of Bolton Wanderers for generations to come, and whether that history (to you) looks like Kevin Davies at Bayern Munich or Ben Jackson at Morecambe, if this is finally the season we do it, it’ll be one that’s remembered.

It would be the 3rd time in quick succession that Wanderers have been to Wembley, but with both games being at completely opposite ends of the spectrum, there’s no comfort to take from that, besides perhaps which hotel you like/don’t like, but we have to get there first. It’s difficult not to get carried away and reminisce about that arch in the sunshine, but Bradford are no pushovers. 

Up The Whites