The League One table since Steven Schumacher replaced Ian Evatt at Bolton Wanderers | OneFootball

Steven Schumacher took charge of his first game in charge of Bolton in February and things have been fairly average for the Trotters ever since.

In mid-January, Bolton Wanderers parted company with long-time manager Ian Evatt, as the Trotters failed to sustain any sort of form and found themselves drifting towards the middle of the League One table after beginning the campaign as one of the teams most heavily tipped to challenge for automatic promotion.

Now, with two games of the 2024/25 campaign to go and over two and a half months into the reign of former Plymouth Argyle and Stoke City boss Steven Schumacher, things have not improved as they sit six points outside the top six and, with a substantially weaker goal difference, that means their campaign is over – if not yet mathematically done and dusted.

With things seemingly so poor at the Toughsheet Community Stadium and many believing just a parting of company between Wanderers and Evatt would lead to a natural improvement, there is now a belief that these issues run a bit deeper than the manager.

With seven defeats in their last nine matches in League One, and the two games that they haven’t lost in that time being narrow 1–0 wins against struggling Wigan Athletic and Bristol Rovers with late winning goals, there is a need for a bit of a shake-up this summer, with Schumacher already criticising the mentality of his players and admitting he didn’t realise how a big a job it was that he had decided to take on.

Bolton are in mid-table form

Bolton have collected six fewer points than what would have represented play-off form in the last few months since the arrival of Schumacher and the fact they are as many points off the fourth-worst record in that time, Crawley Town, is a major concern.

It is even more of a concern that in Bolton’s seven victories under the management of Schumacher, there has not been one win by more than a solitary goal whereby they have taken the lead – which would suggest they haven’t been able to put together an overriding, completely convincing performance throughout his tenure.

In fact, the last game in which the Whites were able to simply beat a team by taking the lead and doing so by more than a one-goal margin was in the final game before his arrival under the interim management of Julian Darby against Northampton Town in late-January.

A collapse under Schumacher

It had been a bright start to the Schumacher era in Lancashire, but they have pretty much more or less collapsed in the last month or so, with their 4-2 defeat to Lincoln City at Sincil Bank on Easter Monday being their seventh defeat in their last nine matches in the third-tier.

With five wins, a draw and a defeat, with that defeat coming after just a day in charge of the club against Reading in early February, Wanderers fans had even begun to dream of having a tilt at the top two and the automatic promotion spots.

However, the last month or so has seen them collapse away and back down into the middle-of-the-table, where they actually spent a fair chunk of the first-half of the campaign, and there is a reasonable argument to be made that things are worse now than what they were under Evatt at the beginning of this year.

With two games left of the campaign, one away at Peterborough United and then one where they finish at home to Stevenage, it is a case of getting out of this season, rebuilding and then allowing Schumacher the time to have a proper influence on the squad and what team he wants for next season, but it has not been a wholly positive start to his time at the Toughsheet Community Stadium.