[Lord Snooty]

Bolton Wanderers v Huddersfield Town
The Sky Bet Championship
Saturday November 29th - 3:00 ko
at The Macron Stadium

Huddersfield Town travel to Bolton Wanderers to the Macron Stadium on Saturday for a crucial clash in the Championship. Crucial as in if we lose they go above us and we could be back in the relegation dog fight. Win and we could be looking up at the Play Offs again.

Team news: Alex Smithies missed the draw at home to Sheffield Wednesday last week having been troubled with back spasms. No news on his fitness yet, but Joe Murphy deputised so well, it could be difficult for the manager to drop him for this match. James Vaughan was rumoured to be on the bench for last week's match, but these rumours proved to be unfounded. Who knows when he will be back?

Bolton will be without Mark Davies who has knackered the knee which kept him out of the game for nine months last year. Unlucky! They will also be without Jermaine Beckford, who has gone on loan to Preston.

How much?  
£25 adults
£18 over-65s and under-23s
£10 under-18s

How to get there:
By car: The post code for sat nav is BL6 6JW. Now this is one of the most difficult grounds in the country to find, so if you don't have sat nav, follow these instructions very carefully.

Turn off M61 at junction 6. Park in the massive club car park.

By train: Horwich Parkway station is even closer to the ground than the motorway.


Where to drink: There is one of those large retail parks next to the ground with the usual Starbucks, Costa Coffee, etc. If it's a pub you're after, the Beehive is the away fans pub. Just carry on to the next roundabout after reaching the stadium. You can park up here as well.
Or you can just get some get beer in the ground.

A brief history of Bolton Wanderers: Founded in 1874 as Christ Church FC, the club found it difficult to find a permanent home, so after four years of wandering around they were renamed Bolton Wanderers. They settled into their home at Burnden Park, which would be theirs for 102 years, in 1895. This was the year after they got to their first FA Cup final and seven years after they became founder members of the Football League.

The Railway End at Burnden Park

The early decades of the 20th century saw them established as one of the country's top clubs, culminating with their first FA Cup win in one of the most famous finals ever. That was of course the 1923 final, the first at Wembley, when they beat West Ham 2-0 in front of an official crowd of 126,000, but which some guesstimates put at over 200,000.
They followed that with further Cup wins in 1926 and 1929.

The 1923 Cup Final

After the war, they became involved in probably the next most famous FA Cup final. 1953 at Wembley, cruising at 3-1 up against Blackpool, they were beaten by the skills of Stanley Matthews and the goals of Stan Mortensen as the Tangerines came back to win 4-3.
Bolton did however win it again in 1958 when two Nat Lofthouse goals beat Manchester United, just a few weeks after the Munich air disaster. Since then, they haven't won anything major. Yes they've won the odd divisional title, but nowt to get excited about.
They left Burnden Park in 1997 and moved into what was then known as the Reebok Stadium. They did qualify for Europe in the 2000s, beating the likes of Atlético Madrid, Red Star Belgrade and drawing away at Bayern Munich. But in 2012 they were relegated to the Championship, where they have struggled ever since.



Head to Head


Bolton lead the overall head to head by 45 wins to 32, with 20 draws. That's in all competitions. In league matches it's 32 Town wins to Bolton's 37, with 20 draws.

Town won this fixture last year with a brilliant Oliver Norwood strike giving us a 1-0 win. That was the first win at Bolton though since 1968. One of those hoodoo statistics that now having been dealt with, we can surely go there and win again.

The most famous match betweenn the two clubs though didn't take place in Bolton, but at Leeds Road on the 12th of April 1926 when goals from Billy Smith, Alex Jackson and Clem Stephenson gave us the 3-0 win that secured our third consecutive League title, thus becoming the first Thrice Champions.

Sixpence for a ham sarnie???

So what have modern day Bolton got?

Managed these days by Neil Lennon, the former Celtic manager, they drew 1-1 last Saturday at Blackpool with a late equalising goal coming from South Korean international, Lee Chung-Yong. They have won their last three home games against Wigan, Cardiff and Brentford.
The squad includes former Leeds keepers, Andy Lonergan and Paddy Kenny. The captain is the ex Liverpool dwarf, Jay Spearing. Dangerous strikers Liam Trotter (signed from Millwall) and Joe Mason (on loan from Cardiff) have been on the bench recently, leaving ex Barnsley and Chesterfield forward, Craig Davies up front on his own. Davies, Mason and defender, Matt Mills are the joint top scorers this season with 4 each.

How loud do those hands make it?

Recent form - Last six games:

Town 0-0 Sheff Wendies
Fulham 3-1 Town
Derby 3-2 Town
Town 3-0 Nottm Forest
Ipswich 2-2 Town
Town 1-1 Brighton

Blackpool 1-1 Bolton
Bolton 3-1 Wigan
Bolton 3-0 Cardiff
Norwich 2-1 Bolton
Bolton 3-1 Brentford
Charlton 2-1 Bolton

Bolton are 21st in the league with 18 points, that's 3 less than we have. Town are 14th on 21 points. A defeat for Town in this match would mean Wanderers leap frog over us. It's that tight at the bottom now, with only 5 points separating the Wendies in 13th and Wigan in 23rd.



Club connections:

Jermaine Beckford and Neil Danns of the current Bolton squad played for Town. And our Danny Ward played for them.


Neil Danns: has travelled around a bit, doing the length of the country from loan spells at Hartlepool and Colchester. It will be his loan spell at Huddersfield Town which his career will long be remembered for though. Yes, he's played in the Premier league for both Blackburn and Birmingham, but it will be the goal he scored for Town at Bellend Road in a famous 2-1 victory that made his name.
He was on loan from Leicester at the time and the following season he went on loan to Bolton, before making the deal permanent in April.

Jermaine Beckford: is a bit of a Marmite player for Town fans. Some hate him because he's a Dirty L**ds legend. Some love him because he scored the goals that kept Town up the other season.
He was signed by Dennis Wise for the Dirties in 2006 from Wealdstone and immediately sent out on loan as they got relegated to League One. Meanwhile as they were struggling for goals, Beckford was banging them in at Scunthorpe. He did return to the Bellend though and unfortunately his goals saw them get promoted back to the Championship.
That earned him a big money move to the Premier League where he became the worst player ever to pull on an Everton shirt. In his game against Town in the League Cup he was quite frankly anonymous. We booed every time he touched the ball, which was about four times. Then he popped up and scored a penalty.
After his failure at Goodison, he dropped back into the Championship with Leicester, signed by Sven-Göran Eriksson, but not fancied by Nigel Pearson, he was packed off to Huddersfield where he spent months on the treatment table before coming back to score some crucial goals, most notably at Wolves and the home games with Millwall and Barnsley.
He has now of course, fooked off to Preston just to avoid playing against us again.




Danny Ward: only actually played two first team games for Bolton, both coming on from the bench. He then went off to Swindon on loan. The following season he went to Coventry on loan, but got injured and after recovering from that he made the trip to Yorkshire to join the Terriers.
His first Town goal came in the brilliant away win at Brighton, which went down in history as the last ever goal scored at the Withdean Stadium. He signed permanently in that summer and has been in and out of form and the team ever since. He had his best goalscoring season last season, scoring ten, including a couple against the team he played youth football for, the Dirty L**ds.

Benik Afobe: the Arsenal striker came to us on loan in 2010 as a raw 17 year old and helped us to the Play Off Final. He had a loan spell at Bolton a couple of years later and is now at MK Dons where he achieved fame knocking Man Utd out of the League Cup.

Sam Allardyce: started his career at Bolton in 1973, winning the 2nd division title with them in 1977/78 under the management of Ian Greaves. Played for Mick Buxton at Town in the early 80s. And so having played under two of the world's best managers, he went on to be quite successful in management himself and is currently the boss at West Ham.

Wayne Burnett: Another managerial success, managing Dagenham & Redbridge to the heights of 9th in League 2 last season. We signed him from Bolton in 1996, with his only significant contribution being a League Cup winner against Crapford at Valley Parade.

Simon Charlton: was last seen playing for the Sealand National Football Team in 2012. He came through the youth system at Huddersfield before coming through to be a star in the first team. He later played in the Premier League with Bolton after spells with Southampton and Birmingham.

Delroy Facey: seems destined for a career in the mailbag sewing industry after being caught up in a betting scandal recently. Started his footballing life at Town from where he went to the Premier League with Bolton.

Alan Gowling: scored a pot load of goals for Town in the 70s after signing for us from Man Utd, but couldn't stop us getting relegated to the 4th division. We then sold him to Newcastle , who then sold him to Bolton where he continued his goalscoring at the top level.

Paul Jones: played over 400 matches for Bolton before his transfer to Huddersfield in 1983. He was the last and possibly only centre back to score a hat trick for us when he bagged three goals (inc 2 pens) against Cardiff in 1984.

Lukas Jutkiewicz: came on loan to us in 2009 from Everton. Last season played for Bolton and is now in the Premier League with Burnley.

Scott Sellars: was shite!


Also Peter Kaye played one match for Town in 1997 before becoming the most famous comedian in Bolton.

Played one match for Town in 1997

The most famous one though would be Frank Worthington. He started his career at Town in the 60s and his goals helped us win the 2nd division title in 1970. He stayed and played for the last Town team to play at the top level of English football, but then blotted his copybook in some eyes by trying to hold the club to ransom as we fought relegation in 1972. That battle was lost and he fooked off to Leicester where he became an England international and then Bolton where he scored one of the best goals ever.
Later in his career he played for Dirty Leeds in the League Cup tie at Bellend Road when we beat the bastards 1-0 with a goal from David Cowling.
His playing career lasted into the early 90s and in his time he played for 24 different clubs. He still lives in the Huddersfield area and was recently voted on to the Legends Walkway.

[ARTERRIER]

Nice thread Snoots.....what about Big Sam Allardyce? Got my ticket for Saturday, tough one to call, they've deffo perked up since Lennon has taken over and this game becomes a whole new challenge than it did a couple of weeks ago. We could do with winning, 3 games without a win now but as I said its a tough one now.

[Lord Snooty]

Sam's in there, ART. Have another look between Benik Afobe and Wayne Burnett.

[Lord Snooty]

Three changes. Wells in for Bunn (Thigh injury), Smithies for Murphy (foot injury) and Robinson for Dixon (bench). Also added to the bench is Joe Lolley.

1. Alex Smithies
4. Mark Hudson ©
7. Sean Scannell
8. Jacob Butterfield
10. Conor Coady
16. Grant Holt
17. Jack Robinson
21. Nahki Wells
27. Tommy Smith
33. Joel Lynch
44. Diego Poyet

Substitutes:
Lloyd Allinson, Paul Dixon, Jonathan Hogg, Danny Ward, Murray Wallace, Joe Lolley, Lee Peltier

[Lord Snooty]

Didn't hear much of it. The bit I did hear seemed like we had some good chances, but yet again, fluffed them.

[Lord Snooty]

Think we're going for the least commented on match thread record here.

---

Bunn and Murphy out for up to 3 weeks. Lynch and Scannell injured in today's game.

[sloppyattheback]

We didnt deserve much cos we weren't very good. Bolton had better pace and movement and always seemed a bit more likely we were just too laboured (as usual in our build up) Scanz the only threat and for much of it both Wells and Holt were ineffective.

We didnt win our battles (nor many headers) up front and the ball just kept coming back to them.

Butterfingers should have scored early 2nd half so it was no suprise when Bolton took their one chance from close range.

Their dog loving Korean Chum Yung Lee ran midfield we couldnt get the ball off him, Davies' pace scared the shit out of Bet and Huddy and Smith and Robinson were kept busy.

We needed to find another 10-15% but we seemed to have peaked against Forest and cant find that level again.

Good to see Trolley Dolly back on the scene, Smithies handling was excellent his kicking and bendy boots as usual, of concern.

Slipping down the league and we've got to find some rhythmn from somewhere pretty fast with in form teams on the horizon.

Struggling with my breathing now that many smoke bombs from the spotty yoof, most of which were thrown out to my right - what's that all about?

[ARTERRIER]

Where as we weren't garbage or anything, we've got to be far far better than that. Can't really disagree with anything with Sloppy says, he's smashed the nail squarely on the head with his post. If that's the best we can offer then we could be in for the long haul.

[Amelia Chaffinch]

I've been in York without much reception. Didn't know we had lost until back in Huddersfield.

[Was Wereham Owl]

Are we allowed to come on here and be a WUM, ...
No need really I guess !!