Stoke City issues should not put Bolton Wanderers off Steven Schumacher pursuit | OneFootball

Bolton Wanderers should overlook Steven Schumacher's spell at Stoke City due to an array of mitigating circumstances at the Potters.

After a four-and-a-half-year spell at Bolton Wanderers, making him one of the longest-serving managers in the EFL, Ian Evatt departed the club on Wednesday morning with the Trotters suffering a 2-1 defeat at home to Charlton Athletic on Tuesday evening.

In what was an improved performance but still poor result at the Toughsheet Community Stadium, it appears to have been a mutual decision for Evatt to depart the club a few months after previously offering his resignation to the board, per the Bolton News, in the aftermath of the Trotters’ 4-0 defeat to Huddersfield Town in mid-September.

One of the leading contenders for the job with the bookmakers is former Plymouth Argyle and Stoke City boss Steven Schumacher, who departed the Potters around the same time as Evatt reportedly offered his resignation earlier this season.

Some supporters and neutrals will have some scepticism about Schumacher’s potential appointment in Lancashire due to his tenure at Stoke, but there are plenty of reasons for Bolton’s hierarchy to dismiss those critics and give Schumacher the job as soon as possible.

The perfect fit at Bolton

Evatt leaves a Bolton squad that has had quite a lot of money spent on it for League One standards, even in this window with the arrival of Joel Randall from Peterborough United, and there can be arguments that aside from the standout names of Finn Azaz and Morgan Whittaker, the personnel within the Wanderers squad matches up to that of the squad that Schumacher led to the League One title in the 2022/23 campaign.

That season saw Argyle reach over 100 points and finish at the top-of-the-table in a very strong League One season that saw now-Premier League, Ipswich Town, finish second and mid-table-in-the-Championship Sheffield Wednesday in third, with Bolton finishing fifth having hammered Plymouth by four goals to nil in the final of that season’s EFL Trophy at Wembley Stadium.

The standard of player isn’t the reason to give the job to Schumacher, although there are arguments he can do what he did at Plymouth with the squad now at the Toughsheet, but it is the profile and construction of the squad that should be the winning argument.

Evatt has been wedded to a 3-4-2-1 system this season but has played three-at-the-back in different guises for the vast majority of his managerial career. He walks away from Bolton with a squad that is now seemingly incapable of playing a different system purely down to the specific recruitment that has been done.

Whilst limiting for some managers, it would appear to be an ideal setup for Schumacher to come in with the aforementioned success he enjoyed with Plymouth being with a 3-4-2-1 formation and similar profiles of players across the pitch.

Schumacher walked away from Plymouth when the Pilgrims seemed in a strong position to surprisingly avoid relegation from the second-tier last season, which they eventually did, but without his presence for at least a section of the campaign, it seems to have been a short-lived reprieve as they appear now relegation-bound this time around onto their fifth manager since his departure within just 13 months.

Mitigating circumstances with Stoke

His departure from Plymouth was as a result of taking the job at Stoke City in December 2023 with the Potters, after another summer of spending relatively heavily once again, underperforming in the Championship.

Schumacher finished the 2023/24 season well at the Bet365 Stadium with the 2011 FA Cup finalists winning four and drawing three of their final eight matches, including a three-match winning run to end the season, and things looked bright for this campaign.

Their bizarrely put-together squad saw them start the season with two victories and three defeats but, despite all the bizarre decision-making and heavy recruitment of recent seasons and Schumacher’s strong end to the previous campaign, Sporting Director Jon Walters took the decision to part company with the former Bury midfielder.

Stoke have only regressed since his departure, which was a heavily criticised decision by supporters of the club, with Schumacher’s replacement, Narcis Pelach, sacked before the end of 2024 and now Mark Robins struggling following their 3-1 defeat at Fratton Park – meaning he has won just one of his opening five games in charge – that coming against a heavily rotated Sunderland side after extra-time in the third round of the FA Cup.

The term a ‘poisoned chalice’ is often used to describe clubs with a recent record like Stoke. Schumacher has been one of five permanent managers at the club since the beginning of the 2022/23 season.

Those mitigating factors make it compelling to actually make his spell at Stoke a positive one given the context and would only strengthen the notion that he is the ideal man to lead Bolton forward in the post-Evatt era.