Bolton Wanderers will always have mixed feelings on £8.2m record-breaker | OneFootball

Having joined Bolton Wanderers for £8.2 million, Johan Elmander left the club with supporters having mixed feelings over him.

After an impressive few years under the management of Sam Allardyce, in which Bolton Wanderers became mainstays of the top eight in the Premier League, they were embarking upon a new era in the summer of 2008 – and their club-record signing Johan Elmander was the headline.

With two games of the 2006/07 campaign to go, Allardyce took the surprise and sudden decision to leave Wanderers after they had been challenging for a top four spot. His replacement was assistant manager Sammy Lee, so things didn’t change too much.

After a poor start to Lee’s reign, Gary Megson was appointed, and he eventually steered Bolton clear of relegation, whilst also making the Round of 16 of the UEFA Cup, albeit Bolton fans believe it should have been further and that is a story for another day.

The first summer transfer window post-Allardyce or Lee saw the Trotters bring in five new players, with Fabrice Muamba, Mustapha Riga and Danny Shittu joining on permanent deals, whilst Ebi Smolarek arrived on loan.

The standout addition, though, was the club-record signing of Johan Elmander from Ligue 1 outfit Toulouse for a fee believed to be in the region of £8.2 million.

Despite moments of magic, Wanderers supporters have mixed feelings about the former Sweden international.

Elmander struggled to get going at Bolton

Having surpassed Wanderers’ previous club-record signing - Nicolas Anelka for £8 million from Chelsea in the summer of 2006 - the pressure was very much on Elmander to try and emulate the Frenchman.

Things started extremely well when he scored in the first-half of his debut as Wanderers defeated newly-promoted Stoke City by three goals to one at the Reebok Stadium on the opening day of the campaign.

He then didn’t register until a burst of four goals in four games in the winter, with three of those goals proving to be decisive in match-winning performances away at fellow strugglers Middlesbrough and then Sunderland.

Elmander had returned five goals in his first 13 Premier League appearances, with now favourable comparisons to Anelka, who had actually failed to score in his first ten games for Bolton, and only had two in 13.

However, after scoring in a 4-2 loss at Villa Park in early December, Elmander failed to register again that season, finishing up with five goals in 30 appearances, although supporters may have been keen to cut him some slack under Megson, with his defensive style of football meaning that Bolton either scored one or failed to score in 26 of their 38 games that season.

The 2009/10 season only saw things get a fair bit worse for the Swede, though, with Megson initially persisting with him but then dropping him to the bench, even when he had appeared to find some form in the autumn, before Owen Coyle came in and began to use him more, but without that faith repaid as Elmander managed just one goal in 16 appearances at the back end of the campaign following the appointment of Coyle.

There was a growing opinion within the fanbase that Elmander was often quite lazy, and also lacked the physicality to compete with the demands of the Premier League.

Elmander showed fight and class in his final year

Accusations of laziness and aspersions cast over his character were perhaps only made worse when Elmander then began to turn on the style in the final year of his contract, seemingly trying to show enough quality to earn him another cushty contract in Lancashire.

In the 2010/11 campaign, Wanderers spent most of the season challenging for a top six finish before falling away at the back end of the season with five successive losses after they were beaten 5-0 by Stoke City in an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley Stadium.

Elmander had been a key cog in the Coyle-led side that played an attacking and entertaining style of football that season, with the former Feyenoord man reaching nine goals in 19 appearances by Boxing Day, with Wanderers bouncing around from fifth to sixth to seventh in the first-half of the campaign.

One of those nine goals included a now-famous solo strike against Wolverhampton Wanderers, where he managed to acutely turn a couple of Wolves defenders inside and out on the spot, before finishing with aplomb at Molineux.

However, the goals dried up in the Premier League that season, not helped by the arrival of Daniel Sturridge on loan and Coyle opting to shift him out of position to either be a winger or even a central midfielder in the latter stages of the campaign.

The second-half of the season did see Elmander enjoy another memorable moment, though, as he put Bolton 1-0 up in an eventual 3-2 defeat of Birmingham City at St Andrew's in their FA Cup quarter-final.

Whether it be at Sunderland or Middlesbrough away in the early winter of 2008 or throughout the first-half of the season in 2010/11, Elmander put in performances where he could simply be unplayable.

However, supporters’ perception of his attitude and his sheer lack of consistency was always something that grated and his reputation at the Reebok has eventually suffered with that.

Fans have perhaps softened their stances on Elmander as time has gone by, but there remains a feeling it could have been so much more – and that so much more could have been a lot more often than what it was.