Bolton vs Morecambe

Bolton host Morecambe at University of Bolton Stadium in Bolton for this League One round 4 early Wednesday morning Beijing time. This is the third tier of English football. The situation is very clear here: Bolton are the better team and play at home. This means that they are clear favorites. Indeed, they have a 56% chance to take all three points here. They do have a cool stadium and loyal fans but are still not a particularly strong home team. Last season they were quite disappointing as a whole and were only the 10th-best home team in League One winning 12/23 matches at their stadium. Now they would need to win by at least two goals’ difference to stop my fans and me from winning again! This is not very probable, and the visitors cover the handicap at probability of 73%. Bolton are better than the better team in all areas of the game, but the difference is nit massive in any are. In fact, I see their offense as clearly worse than the betting market and seemingly many football analysts and journalists do..

As a club Bolton are in steep decline and I expect them to be worse than last season when they finished in 9th place with 73 points and a goal difference of 74:57. They did take many wins at the end of the last season but had quite a lot of luck in many of these games.. Bolton played in the Premier League 10 years ago but there is nothing to suggest that they would rise from the ashes.. They are definitely worse as a team on the pitch than the player’s total market of 10+ million euros according to Transfermarkt.com would reflect. I also think that their manager Evatt is on over-rated guy. I watched some of their friendly matches earlier this summer and was not convinced.. They have won just three of their latest eight games in all competitions and were massively dominated last weekend by Port Vale but it was a goalless draw. Bolton did receive a red card though but still did not convince me. Morecambe have taken two draws in this league and lost one match so far. They have been pretty lame offensively and will probably play pretty defensive and cautious football here and would most likely be satisfied with a draw. They do have potential to score some goals as well though – probably on counterattacks. As a team they play better than the list of players would indicate, and their team spirit should be fine. They have lost just three of their latest 10 matches. 2-1 is my score prediction here!

GOOD LUCK!