The Winds of Change, And Other Seemingly Irrelevant Stories

Article by e-Bolton Wanderers Correspondent Adam Brabbin

With one final lap around the Reebok stadium, as we have known it for the better part of close to twenty years, the season came grinding to its predictable conclusion for Bolton Wanderers; fourteenth in the league, not bad, not great. A season to put behind us, but not one to forget, there have been some signs in the latter half that have given Bolton fans cause once again to reach for their ‘optimism’ hats, if only to cover the patchy bald spots resulting from performances earlier in the campaign that left them yanking at their follicles in despair. Having masterfully circumvented those pesky play-offs, eyes are now cast toward the start of the new season.

Clothes maketh the man, and presumably new clothes maketh a new man, or men, or team. We can certainly hope so anyway, with Macron taking upon themselves the responsibility of designing the kit for the new term.

We have entered the no-mans-land of the seasons end where we now wait in eager anticipation of the kit we will be presented with, dismiss as ugly, and then buy anyway after much soul searching on the topic of whether or not a sporting kit can ever really have any sort of relevance or merit as a fashion item and ultimately deciding that the only occasion it would ever be worn is in the context and company of other similarly (if not identically) dressed people and that ‘blow it’, I always buy the new kit anyway. Hopefully the powers that be in the Macron headquarters will draw less inspiration from highlighter pens than this years’ eye-wateringly bright Adidas effort of an away kit.

I tend to enjoy this part of the season more than I feel I should; there is no football to watch (certainly none that matters – I’m looking at you, World Cup), and nothing to occupy our weekends with but pointless hobbies, family and friends. Wasted, dead weekends spent devoid of ninety minutes of aggravation and stress.

By all accounts, football fans should have evolved to hibernate the whole three months that we are left in limbo with nothing to do, and wake up a couple of hours before that glorious first kick-off of a new season. I should feel like that, but I don’t. In fact I quite enjoy the speculation that is rampant during these league-less months. The wild speculation that flourishes is fundamental to every football fans idea that they have some unique and brilliant insight into the inner workings of their club and that really, given the chance, they would make a much better manager than the clue-less berk currently in charge of their team. Predictions are a part of human nature that excite us because until they are disproved they could just as easily turn out to be true.

Why can’t we sign that striker? We could, and maybe we will, so times are good! Arthur C. Clarke wrote that, “the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible”, so why shouldn’t we dream big and hope for the best, even in the face of stupid, boring probability and his frequently depressing friend, reality. Predictions also allow us to gain a sense of perspective on where we have been and where we hope to be in the future.

The science fiction author, Isaac Asimov, is one such example of a person who would observe the world around him and make educated hunches and guesses about the direction that self-same world would take in the near future. From his grainy, black and white existence in 1964, he successfully predicted astonishingly accurate accounts of our world as we know it today. Asimov saw a future that contained wireless technology, unmanned expeditions of the planet Mars, escalators, satellite technology… even the rapid population increase and the work on self-driving cars. He was a master of imagining the course of events that we, as a species, would take.

We, the humble football fan, take part in our own future forecasting. We take into account the current state of the club, its perceived standing in the football world and some good old fashioned 'home team bias' and we create this vision of the players that we expect to bring in and the number of years it will take before we can taste sweet Premier League success once more.

How reliable our predictions turn out to be can be determined by only one thing; time, and wouldn't you know it, time is one thing that this close season seems to provide us with in abundance. Lucky us! So we have plenty of time to craft an image of ourselves as a team destined for bigger and better things. We can't be sure how things will turn out and this, in turn, is exciting. As Asimov himself said in 1964, “what will the World of 2014 be like? I don't know, but I can guess”. There will be a lot of guess work over the next few months and I will cherish every moment of it, because once the season starts again we could, just possibly, come crashing back down to face reality... And wouldn't that just be predictable?

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