Guardian writers' prediction: 13th Odds to win league: 750-1
Gary Megson clearly has a problem. And it is this: his name isn't Sam Allardyce. "It's not that easy for fans to love me," he volunteered, early in his time in office at Bolton Wanderers, when he started picking up vibes that not all of the fans wanted him as the club's manager. Small hints, perhaps, like hearing them shouting for him to eff off back to the lower leagues.
It is a peculiar situation. Megson felt like a crazy choice. He had just come back into the game, at Leicester City, after 17 months in the wilderness, and with Nottingham Forest's relegation to League One on his conscience. There were misgivings about the influence of his agent, Mark Curtis, at Bolton and the fans saw it as the moment the club hoisted the white flag – an abandonment of any hope or ambition that they could ever regard the more successful Allardyce years as the norm rather than the exception.
And yet, who can possibly argue that Megson has done anything other than an impressive job? Or that it is wholly unfair that he seems to get the blame for everything at Bolton from the half-time oranges being too sour to the ghastly design of the new home and away strips?
Perhaps this is a classic case of the problem being with the dissenters rather than the man himself. The thing about success is that it increases expectations and demands, and maybe there is an argument that Bolton's supporters should be more realistic and be glad just to have a relatively safe and stable Premier League team when there are arguably half a dozen bigger clubs than them in the divisions below. That is not to say they should give up on ambition and dreams and hope and everything else that football fans want to believe in – but, equally, perhaps it is time to cut Megson some slack.
The man Brian Clough once claimed "could not trap a bag of cement" inherited an ageing squad from Allardyce, with a handful of wishy-washy signings thrown in from the tragic-comedy of Sammy Lee's brief promotion, but he saved them from what looked like an almost certain relegation in his first season and has been steadily improving the club since then. The summer acquisitions of Sean Davis, Sam Ricketts, Paul Robinson and Zat Knight all look like sensible buys and it is not wholly unrealistic, in a league with maybe only eight good teams, that Bolton could finish somewhere from ninth to 11th next season if their squad is not stretched too much by injuries. Last season, they had one of the more settled teams in the top division.
Whether Megson will ever win over the haters who constantly seem to want to berate and undermine him is another matter. Allardyce had spoiled Bolton, taking them into Europe for the first time in their history. To appoint a manager of Megson's then poor reputation was regarded as an admission that the club were now drawing a line under the punching-above-our-weight years. And it has gone on from there, culminating at times in some pretty poisonous abuse.
Megson, it must be said, is not a man to inspire a sense of great excitement, chewing his gum, looking angry, with a reputation for ostracising any players he thinks have crossed him. He has none of the stardust or charisma that some fans seem to think is essential. He does not inspire an element of fantasy. The Allardyce method of bringing in mini-galácticos on free transfers but high wages – Youri Djorkaeff, Ivan Campo, Jay-Jay Okocha – has gone, replaced by a more orthodox method of transfer business.
Gary Cahill and Matt Taylor have both excelled, but the one signing that can be held against Megson is his biggest one, the Swedish international Johan Elmander, who cost £8m from Toulouse and went on to score only five goals last season. Megson, perhaps surprisingly, has chosen not to bring in another striker so far this summer and, if Bolton are to get that mid-table finish, it might be that Elmander has to demonstrate why the club were willing to spend so much on him.
In: Zat Knight (Aston Villa, £4m), Sam Ricketts (Hull City, undisclosed), Sean Davis (Portsmouth, free), Paul Robinson (West Brom, loan)
Out: Blerim Dzemaili (Torino, undisclosed), James Sinclair (released), Robert Sissons (released), Nathan Woolfe (released)
