Seven decades of Cardiff City v Bolton Wanderers games.

Posted on April 10, 2026 by The other Bob Wilson

Tomorrow sees the game that a couple of months was being predicted by some as the one we’d clinch promotion in. As it stands, victory over Bolton at Cardiff City Stadium in the lunchtime kick off, would feel like a huge step towards a top two finish. What it would do is ensure that victories in our final two home games against teams that will, in all likelihood, have had their relegation confirmed would mean we’d be up no matter what Bolton, Bradford and Stockport do in their remaining games.

There are two ways of looking at Bolton’s results over the past three months or so, the glass half full version says that they’ve only lost once in their last seventeen games, but the glass half empty view is that recent home draws with the likes of Blackpool and Doncaster and an away draw at Rotherham reiterate the view that they’ve not been doing enough to close the gap between them and second place.

Although Monday’s opponents, Stockport, are one of those teams that can still dream of coming second, another draw was not good enough really for Bolton and, while a point tomorrow wouldn’t be too bad an outcome for us, it, surely, has to be a win for our visitors?

The downsides for City are, first, their stuttering recent results which have seen them turn from a free scoring team by Cardiff standards of the Tan era into an outfit that looks like it has no confidence whatsoever in their finishing as exemplified by three home games without a goal.

Secondly, from having four realistic contenders for the centreback position through much of the season, we’re now in a position where it could well be that only one of them will be able to play tomorrow. Gabriel Osho is definitely out as he completes his three game suspension and the way BBM talked about Calum Chambers’ wrist injury in Wednesday’s press conference makes it sound like he is going to miss out. On Wednesday, Dylan Lawlor had still not trained following his frustrating injury picked up in the pointless Northern Ireland friendly, but you’d think every effort is going to be made to ensure he starts and my feeling is that he will.

However, if Chambers and Lawlor miss out, will we see Ronan Kpakio come in on the right with Perry Ng switched to the middle as happened in the second half on Monday when the young Wales player looked very low on confidence? To be frank, it’s hard to see many alternatives to this if we’re not going to bring in someone from the under 21s for a league debut.

Possible options would be to play Ryan Wintle at centreback as he did following Osho’s red card against Wycombe and continue with David Turnbull in the starting line up or Joel Colwill could start in midfield. The other one would be to play Calum Scanlon at left back, assuming his absence from Peterborough squad was not down to injury, and Joel Bagan would slot in alongside Will Fish.

Anyway, on to the quiz, with the answers to the seven questions being posted on Sunday.

60s. I suppose he would have been thought of as a number ten or number eight these days, rather than the inside forward he was classed as when he started with Bolton nearly seventy years ago. He was a fixture in their side for a number of years before a move to his native county to play for a team which is, just about, still hoping for a return to the EFL next season seemed to be a sign of his career winding down. However, a year later he returned to Lancashire to sign for a First Division club and, although thirty odd appearances in his three years there suggested he was a squad member rather than a regular starter, he didn’t move on until he was well into his thirties. His final league club were very recent opponents of ours and, after leaving the full time game, there was a move overseas to play geographically close to the Blarney Stone before he turned out for a couple of non league clubs from Greater Manchester, who is being described here?

70s. This defender spent the large majority of his career wearing a white shirt. Starting with Bolton as a teenager, he would still be classed as a young player when he was signed by a club that were no longer regular opponents of theirs. He spent close to a decade at his second club and, just before he left, he was a squad member when they ended a fairly long wait for a trophy. He became a kind of Embassy worker wearing red for a while during a loan transfer and moved on permanently four years later when he travelled not too far to play in red again in a depression. After that, he played a game for Floridian hooligans before finishing up pretty close to Bolton with another team with hopes of getting back into the EFL in 26/27, but who is he?

80s. Help nail Graham Taylor’s assistant! (4,4)

90s. Northern vaults aurally.

00s. Which Bolton player from this decade shares his name with a one time trumpeter for an ex Animal who went on to be closely associated with someone who I think it’s fair to say was, and still is, considered a broadcasting legend before his death in 2004?

10s. He was a Cardiff City player in the noughties, a Bolton player during this decade and is currently on the books of a League Two club. He has a First Class Batchelor of Arts degree in Sports Journalism and Broadcasting and has an international cap of sorts when he played for an England side in Martin Keown’s Testimonial game as a seventeen year old – name him.

20s. Island sanctuary?

Answers

60s. Freddie Hill won a couple of caps for England during his twelve years with Bolton. He signed for Halifax in 1969, but then Manchester City bought him as the new decade started and he stayed with them until 1973 when he signed for Peterborough. Hill played for Cork Hibernians and then returned to the Manchester area for spells with Droylesden and Radcliffe Borough.

70s. Don McAllister joined Spurs from Bolton in 1972 and had a loan spell with the Washington Diplomats five years later. McAllister was a squad member when Spurs won the FA Cup in 1981 before having a couple of seasons with Charlton and his last two teams were Tampa Bay Rowdies and Rochdale.

80s. Phil Neal.

90s. Scott Sellars.

00s. Current Stoke City Sporting Director Jonathan Walters played four games for Bolton between 2001 and 2004 before going on to enjoy a successful career with the likes of Ipswich and Stoke. John Walters played trumpet in the Alan Price Set (Price was formerly the keyboard player with the Animals), but it’s probably being the producer of the John Peel show between 1969 and 1991. that he’s best known for – he was also the Best Man at Peel’s wedding.

10s. Mark Howard was with City for the 06/07 season and played thirty five league games for Bolton between 2016 and 2018. He’s still on Salford’s books at the age of thirty nine and he played in goal for an England eleven in a Testimonial game for Martin Keown in 2004.

20s. Lewis Temple.

Posted in Memories, 1963 - 2023 | Tagged | Comments Off on Seven decades of Cardiff City v Bolton Wanderers games.

On this evidence, two weeks on the training ground has done nothing for Cardiff’s finishing.

Posted on April 7, 2026 by The other Bob Wilson

Lincoln City clinched promotion to the Championship this afternoon with a 2-1 win at Play Off contenders Reading with their goals coming from their only on target efforts out of the six goal attempts they had all game.

Meanwhile, Cardiff City, the team most likely to take the second automatic promotion spot, were having twenty nine goal attempts, eight of them on target, and fifty touches of the ball in the opposition penalty area in their game at Peterborough.

A neutral not used to watching either side play would, no doubt, have enjoyed what was an entertaining affair and probably would have thought City had been unlucky to get nothing more than a 1-1 draw. 

However, as someone who has watched all of Cardiff’s games since the home loss to Lincoln which seems to have drained so much of the confidence of their attacking players, the surprise to me was that we managed to score at all.

City have had a 4-0 away romp at Exeter since that Lincoln game, but, that apart, the team that had been the division’s hot shots for so long have been making goal scoring look almost impossible. The irony of all ironies today was that having finally managed to score, it only took seventeen seconds of playing time for the ball to hit the back of our net for the equaliser!

I think the best way to sum up City’s current dilemma is to look at the performance of one player, Cian Ashford. The Rhondda product was excellent in many respects, strong, hard to shake off the ball, skilful, bright and inventive, yet give him a shooting or heading opportunity and all of that poise and belief evaporates and the ball ends up going anywhere, but on target.

It’s harsh in many respects to single out Ashford because all bar one of his team mates were unconvincing in the final third today. The exception to the rule was, amazingly, Ryan Wintle, with his one goal all season and yet here he could have had four.

Alex Bass was made Peterborough’s man of the match and it was almost entirely due to saves he made from Wintle from shots outside the penalty area. The first one came in the first half as he tipped over a twenty yarder. There was a better save to turn over a shot from a bit further out after the break, another low effort that seemed to be kept out by a combination of keeper and the upright and then a daisy cutter which appeared to beat the keeper,  but also was inches the wrong side of the post.

It was somehow typical of City’s finishing that Bass’ other fine save came from a Perry Ng effort that deflected off a defender and the keeper managed to kick it away while diving the wrong way.

Apart from that, Ashford was a little unlucky to see his header from almost point blank range hit a defender and bounce out although you couldn’t help thinking a goal would have been inevitable if he’d been a bit more positive in his movement towards the ball.

Alex Robertson and Ollie Tanner saw efforts miss the same post Wintle shot past by no more than a foot, but, too often, City wanted that extra touch or their final ball was lacking.

One “after you Claude” moment in the first half showed City in all of their current uncertainty as they opened up the home defence, but instead of shooting, three times they opted to pass and each time they made the opportunity more difficult.

There were also concerns at the other end of the pitch as the home forwards, particularly the debutant Bolo Shofowoke, had a definite edge in pace over their markers. 

Shofowoke left Calum Chambers for dead in the first half before forcing Nathan Trott into a good save on his near post and they must have known there would be further chances after the interval given that City were playing with their usual high line.

Chambers had injured his wrist in the first half and was replaced by Ronan Kpakio, while David Turnbull was a little fortunate to avoid a red card as his tackle forced Tom Lees off and having been cautioned, it was understandable to see him replaced by Alex Robertson.

The Aussie had only been on for three minutes when he broke the deadlock as the home defence made a mess of clearing Tanner’s cross and the ball dropped to him stood close to the penalty spot. The contact wasn’t the cleanest as the shot went into the ground and then bounced past Bass.

Even when they were at their best either side of Christmas, City’s opponents always thought they had a chance of getting back into a game after falling 1-0 down and Posh took no time  in replying here as a ball was played forward to Kyrell Lisbie who got there before Kpakio to play Harry Leonard clear of a statuesque, square defence and he went on to easily beat Trott. Kpakio was at fault to an extent, but the worst bit about the goal was that we were in possession of the ball for a few seconds before Joel Bagan I think it was gave it away with a careless pass.

Sadly though, Kpakio looked devoid of confidence as he made what was a rare appearance in the team in recent months and he was nowhere to be seen as Lisbie, who he was supposed to be marking, was played through by a ball out from the back only for the highly rated winger to shoot tamely straight at Trott. Again, Kpakio was culpable, yet it was still very concerning how Lisbie was put through beyond the centrebacks so easily and, for all City’s pressure, this was probably the best chance of the second half.

Bradford took advantage of our failure to win (again) with an impressive come from behind win at Wycombe to cut the deficit to seven points, but our goal difference is far better than theirs and we have a game in hand on them – the most points Bradford can get is eighty six, so three wins from our last six matches will mean we finish above them whatever they do and two wins and two draws would almost certainly be enough for us.

Bolton and Stockport can both reach eighty five points, so, again, given our much better goal difference, two wins and a draw should be enough for us to finish above them. A 2-2 draw this afternoon between those two clubs was of little use to either of them as far as automatic promotion is concerned, but our running out of steam in recent weeks has left three other sides still thinking they could still go up in second place.

The best news of the day was the return of Yousef Salech for the last twenty five minutes. In truth, after he made some useful contributions when he first came on, his lack of game time showed, but, nevertheless, his return couldn’t come soon enough.

Posted in Out on the pitch | Tagged | 8 Comments