The new League One season is just around the corner and despite calls for him to leave, Phil Parkinson remains Bolton’s best choice for manager job
With the new football season just a month away from starting, we’re finally starting to see some green shoots of progress starting to emerge at Bolton.
After 12 turbulent months, it makes a nice change to see the club start to get back on track, helped with the booking of the team’s first friendlies of pre-season.
Of course, there are still some lingering doubts and worries to be had over Bolton’s situation.
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For a start, the club only has 13 players currently on its books which isn’t even enough to put a full matchday squad together.
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However, it is the man who will take charge of this meagre squad that is the hot topic among fans on social media at the moment.
Understandably, there’s a lot of trepidation about keeping hold of Phil Parkinson for the season ahead.
He was in charge of arguably the club’s worst-ever season last time out and opinions of the manager have not been helped by the brand of hoofball on show at the UniBol over the past few seasons.
However, with a month to go until the new season starts, Phil Parkinson remains the best man for the job.
His track record with Bolton in League One was superb in 2016/17 as he led the club to automatic promotion at the first attempt.
The last two seasons in the Championship have seen Bolton struggle but when you have clubs at the top end of the league spending tens of millions to make a bid for the Premier League, it makes life much harder for a team who have only bought one player for actual cash in the last three years.
On top of that, Parkinson has remained calm and dignified through what must’ve been the most stressful period of his career last season. The way he and his backroom staff have remained professional, despite not being paid fully for the past few months, is admirable to say the least.
Sure, I’m as sick and tired of seeing the ball hoofed away at the first possible opportunity as well but given the circumstances, who else could Bolton realistically bring in right now, apart from maybe David Lee, to take charge?
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Unless Bolton’s incoming owners have planned on a specific manager to come in, Parkinson is our best bet for now, purely because of the limited amount of time until the season starts.
At the very least, it makes sense to keep hold of him until October or November to see how the side is getting on. If we’re struggling, then I doubt many people would have any issue with seeing the back of Parkinson at that point.
All we need this season is to survive in this division in order to give the club a degree of stability and a foundation to build on and it would make sense to keep hold of Phil Parkinson for the time being.
So yes, while I can understand the calls for Parky to call time on his Bolton tenure, I just can’t see it being helpful to rock the boat just now.