Gary Megson : Not Such A Rubbish Manager After All

Sometimes football fans, in particular Premier League football fans, surprise me with their attitudes to particular players or managers in the game.

Let's take Bolton Wanderers boss Gary Megson as an example. Getting past the (faintly ironic) 'Ginger Mourinho' chants when he took over, it's fair to say that the Bolton faithful haven't taken to the ex-West Brom man.

The question I have to ask is why?

Megson took over from Sammy Lee when Wanderers were struggling badly and with star man Nicolas Anelka on his way out of the club.

While the manager didn't cover himself with glory that season, he did keep the club up and that was what he was asked to do. Chairman Phil Gartside told him to balance the books and again : job done.

Since then Megson has proved surprisingly astute in the transfer market : he's brought in talent like Gary Cahill and Matt Taylor - both with proven Premiership quality.

Add to that more recent acquisitions like Tamir Cohen and the South Korean, Lee, and you can't deny that Megson is doing a good job with extremely limited funds.

Bolton fans need to get off Megson's back - he's doing as good a job as can be done and is bringing through good players that will make the club a profit in the long run.

Doing this and keeping Bolton in the Premiership is something to be applauded, not decried.

Relegation Predictions Revisited

In June, I posted some completely groundless relegation predictions for the 2007-2008 Premiership football season.

I knew I was going to have to revisit these fairly early in the new Premiership season, as some clubs strengthen and others - inexplicably - weaken themselves.

One club determined to do the latter seems to be Bolton Wanderers. With rumours of Anelka's departure gathering momentum and manager Sammy Lee's determination to sideline their other true talent - El Hadj Diouf - I'm beginning to think that Bolton for relegation is a good bet.

On the other hand, Fulham - who had struggled to bring in the players they wanted in the early part of the transfer window - are now looking a fairly solid outfit. The additions of Chris Baird, Steve Davis and David Healy to Lawrie Sanchez' squad seems to have already made a difference. So, despite my earlier prediction, no relegation for Fulham.

I still think Wigan are vulnerable and Derby are doomed, so my bottom three are:

Bolton
Wigan
Derby

I'm going to stick with that until the Premiership football season finishes, if that's OK with you lot.

The Annual 'Who's For The Sack' Post

Inspired by this thread on SkySports, I thought I'd start my own Annual 'Who's For The Sack' post.

The SkySports punters are throwing out predictable names like Lawrie Sanchez (doubtful - I think he's bought fairly well this summer), Billy Davies (unlikely - Derby aren't expecting to stay up) and Roy Keane (more likely to resign than be sacked).

However, two names do stand out as likely candidates for the boot.

As we are so frequently reminded, the Premiership is about quality. And, if you don't have that, you are doomed.

So, step forth Chris Hutchings of Wigan Athletic and 'Little' Sammy Lee of Bolton Wanderers and explain yourselves.

Your signings this summer are scarily poor. Here are Bolton's (stop me when you recognise any of these names) :

Mikel Alonso,
Daniel Braaten,
Gerald Cid,
Blerim Dzemaili,
Danny Guthrie,
Zoltan Harsanyi,
Heidar Helguson,
Gavin McCann
Jlloyd Samuel

If I was Bolton chairman Phil Gartside, I would be worried. These are not the players to get Bolton back into Europe.

I can see Sammy Lee being shown the door just after Christmas.

As for Chris Hutchings, well, I've blogged about his signings fairly recently, so I'm going to have a go at Wigan's Chairman Dave Whelan instead.

Maybe if you had taken more than about 12 minutes to choose your new manager, you wouldn't end up with a squad that includes Titus Bramble. Then you wouldn't need to sack the manager 8 games into the new season.