Like to put my two penneth in on this debate, I will declare my hand, family originally from Salford, my dad is a Blue, I have been a dyed in the wool white for over 30 years despite my dad taking me as a 10 year old to Maine Road, if you analyse the years that I have been watching football, Bolton have had a long time out of the top flight from 1980 through to the mid 90s, and before 1980 it was 16 years out of the top flight, in that time the 2 big clubs within 30 minutes of Burnden Park have both won the top flight league all be it City the once, in the 60s we lost 2 of our top players to City in Franny Lee and Freddie Hill and our downward spiral continued. The result of losing our better players the scrapping of the minimum wage hurt all the traditional town clubs Bolton was no exception, it is a miracle and a tribute to the supporters that stuck with the club in enough numbers to begin the climb back from Division four back to the top flight, obviously the many years out of the top flight it was inevitable some Bolton people would follow the glamour of bigger more fashionable clubs.There is no doubt City are the bigger club, but I don't feel City fans should be gloating about the size of there support, the poulation of Manchester is over 400k the poulation of Bolton is 139k, a 1/3rd of the size of Manchester, throw greater manchester into the equation and poulation is 2.5 million, city fans come from all over Manchester, Bolton fans come from Bolton and a few small towns close to Bolton, City despite 100s of million pounds of foreign investment can only pull roughly twice the crowds of Bolton. Now onto the teams, yesterday was a bad day for us we were below par, City were strong defensively but still I thought tactics were overly negative from Mancini, I am 100% sure he is not the right man for the City job, and he is finding it difficult to control the stars he has assembled. Bolton for me do not have the depth of squad, but at the moment I feel we play a better style of football, more attack minded and better to watch. Finally a comment on your fans I feel many need a reality check the hype and arrogance shown beggars belief. Before yesterdays visit I was enjoying Chelsea and the red scum squirming at Man Citys wealth, now I aint so sure you now seem to be in the same basket as the afore mentioned arrogant clubs. Any way I look forward to our return game at the Reebok and hope we can keep a few of our better playersthrough the January window so we might be in a position to give you a rough ride.
