Bolton Wanderers struck gold with agreement that cost them £0 for ex-Wolves man | OneFootball

It was a masterstroke by Bolton Wanderers when they brought in free agent Karl Henry in September 2017.

In the summer of 2017, Bolton Wanderers were scrambling around for reinforcements to be competitive in the Championship and one signing that they brought in who majorly stabilised the ship and helped lead them to survival in dramatic fashion.

Having gained promotion to back to the second-tier at the first attempt under the management of Phil Parkinson, Bolton were a club with a crisis bubbling away underneath that would soon see them come extremely close to liquidation.

Bolton’s business throughout the summer, following a second place finish behind Sheffield United in League One, did speak of a lack of joined-up thinking with some intriguing and eventually excellent players having joined on loan, such as Reece Burke, Antonee Robinson and Josh Cullen, alongside more experienced professionals likely to suit the limited style of football implemented by Parkinson, like Will Buckley and Aaron Wilbraham.

The Trotters’ style under Parkinson left a lot to be desired from a neutral or aesthetic perspective, with an enormous emphasis on limiting the opposition and scoring almost exclusively from set-pieces.

If it wasn’t Josh Vela latching on to a Gary Madine knock down then it would be David Wheater or Mark Beevers scoring from a set-piece; that was pretty much the extent to Bolton’s attacking philosophy, as shown by the fact that those were all the four joint top scorers for Bolton in their League One promotion-winning campaign.

To play that style at a higher level would require a seriously impressive presence in the middle of the park to stamp their authority because the higher level of opposition would run amok over a team that actively didn’t want the ball and weren’t good enough when they got near it. In stepped Karl Henry.

Bolton struck gold with Karl Henry

Bolton began the 2016/17 season campaign in woeful fashion with just two points collected from their opening 11 matches of the campaign as they inevitably sat rock-bottom.

Two games prior to the October international break, though, Wanderers announced the signing of veteran midfielder Karl Henry on a free transfer, with the Wolverhampton-born Wolverhampton Wanderers legend having left Queens Park Rangers in the summer.

Bolton put in two more rigid performances against Bristol City and Aston Villa, losing 2-0 and 1-0 at Ashton Gate and Villa Park respectively, before a much-needed and much-improved run of form sparked by the emergence of Henry.

With the team now beginning to be built around the then 34-year-old, who would turn 35 in November, and Bolton would go unbeaten in their next seven matches.

The frustration, but perhaps majorly highlighting the limitations of Parkinson’s in-game management and the fact that Bolton were reliant on a recently signed 34-year-old, would be that there were five draws in that seven-match run; four of which had seen Bolton either lead by one or two goals, with the other being a goalless draw at Deepdale against Preston North End.

Having provided an assist against Sheffield Wednesday, in Bolton’s first win of the campaign, and a goal away at Sunderland during that run of form, Henry had established himself as an out and out key man from the off for the Whites.

Karl Henry was simply key to Bolton’s Championship survival

In the opening nine games of the campaign before his signing, Bolton collected just two points. In the 15 matches after the October international break and up until a 1-0 defeat of Hull City on New Year’s Day, games in which Henry started in all but one when he was a second-half substitute instead on that occasion, Wanderers collected 23 points – losing just four of those matches.

In fact, Henry would miss just four games between signing and the end of the campaign, of which Bolton managed to collect just a solitary point in his absence.

Their form completely collapsed towards the end of the season, requiring a dramatic great escape on the final day, but that form also coincided with Henry bizarrely beginning to be replaced with 15 minutes of the game to go, rather than playing the full 90 minutes.

Up until April and after the October international break, for example, Karl Henry played 90 minutes in 23 matches and Bolton suffered defeat in just six of those games.

Bolton’s season could effectively be split into two; eight defeats in the 23 games where Henry plays every minute and 15 defeats in the 23 games where he didn’t. It is therefore a fair statement that Bolton simply wouldn’t have survived without Karl Henry.

In his typically robust style, Henry led from the front and was even made captain on occasion towards the end of the season, despite only being there for such a short amount of time. He did, as expected, also become a fans’ favourite for living up his tough tackling reputation, which did admittedly lead to him receiving as many as 13 yellow cards.

Even on the final day of the campaign, with Bolton 2-1 down at home to Nottingham Forest in the closing stages of the game and heading down to League One, Henry came up with one more pivotal moment of influence.

David Wheater had equalised for Bolton in the 87th minute before a Karl Henry flick on a minute later got Adam Le Fondre in a position to cross for Aaron Wilbraham, who headed home to make it two goals in a minute and send them out of the bottom three and the relegation places.

From little moments like that to the more macro sense that Bolton were a completely transformed team with Henry on the park, it was a season-defining masterstroke of a deal to bring Henry in on a free transfer back in late-September.