The Reebok stadium on a fine Sunday afternoon with 90 minutes of fine football. A thoroughly enjoyable game with goals, tackles and a lot of skill and guile from one team and a lot of effort and determination and mistakes from another. You could clearly see which team had spent money and which hadn’t but that doesn’t buy you the effort and hard work that the Bolton Wanderers players gave to the match that is not a dig at MCFC from what I personally viewed at times they had Ienough class and skill to play the game their own way. MCFC at time where unplayable with David Silva pulling the strings and the impressive Dzeko causing the Bolton back four problems.
As far as players go there are the obvious two that were at fault for the 1st and the 3rd and a collective team effort for the 2nd for not closing down after the corner (even though it was a good strike). Klasnic is a poacher in the box he showed what he does best in and around the box with a really smart finish after some good build play involving Reo-Coker and Pertov. The 2nd goal was typical Kevin Davies causing problems to both Lescott and Kompany all afternoon and deserving his goal. The back four had shaky moments throughout the match and Sergio Aguero could easily have come away from the game with 2 or 3 goals. Chris Eagles had a rather quite game showed glimpses here and there with a good free kick early on and some nice touches throughout the game with out creating to much. We lost out in the midfield battle with Muamba and Reo-Coker outplayed quite a lot losing out on pretty much all off the stats as shown below.
| Muamba | Reo-Coker | Yaya Toure | Garath Barry | |
| Total passes | 19 | 53 | 53 | 53 |
| Accurate passes | 13 | 39 | 44 | 44 |
| Pass completion | 68% | 74% | 83% | 83% |
| Total crosses | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Goals | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Goal assists | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Tackles | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Tackles won | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Possession duels | 6 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| Possession duels won | 2 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| possession duels lost | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
| aerial duels | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| aerial duels won | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| aerial duels lost | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| interceptions | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Fouls conceded | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| fouls won | 0 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
I left the Reebok not feeling to down heartened by the result and by the performance of the team who put in 100%. A draw would of been fantastic but it just wasn’t to be this weekend. 6 goals from our opening two games is a good return considering out apparant lack of striking options. Maybe Coyle is looking at new options but for now his way of scoring goals seems to be from midfield creating good chances for Klasnic and Kevin Davies to pounce upon.  looking forward to the next game and hoping for a result to match the performance.
Thanks for reading
Tom Hewart
