Quite why Bolton Wanderers chose the music of then-septuagenarian James Brown to try and win back a lost generation of young fans was never clear, but when you glanced around the Reebok, the whole place just … felt good.
Every time Bolton hit the back of the net, the stadium’s legendary PA announcer Colin McGreavy would hit play, and the Godfather of Soul would launch into the chorus of his most famous hit. Not everyone liked it. There are dyed-in-the-wool fans who would rather chew a mouthful of rancid tripe than see their club bring that goal music back, but it was the early noughties, and it worked—just like Sam Allardyce’s Wanderers—an eclectic mix of oddities and artisans grabbed from all four corners of the globe. Nobody on the outside really ‘got it’, and, in truth, it probably was a footballing experiment that could never be as successful again. But this was a world that had not quite tallied with Bosman, was not saturated by data, and Big Sam—who had a firm grip on both—took maximum advantage.
There is a good argument to suggest Allardyce is the Premier League’s greatest-ever salesman. Against all logic, he convinced Nigerian legend Jay-Jay Okocha to drive nine hours on his own from his base in Paris, park his car outside Bolton’s reception, walk into the office, and scribble a contract there and then.
French World Cup winner Youri Djorkaeff was wined, dined and signed without letting him anywhere near the ramshackle training ground at Euxton, and Real Madrid legend Fernando Hierro was convinced into bringing his family to England for a year, the deal sweetened by a man with a van delivering a washing machine.
Let’s be honest: Bolton is not a fashionable destination. An urban Lancastrian hub of the Industrial Revolution, the town’s club had hit its peak between the 1920s and late fifties, winning four FA Cups. It remains to this day the team which has spent the longest time in the top flight without ever actually lifting the title.
Following the abolition of the maximum wage, Bolton and clubs of similar ilk simply couldn’t keep up. There were a couple of mini revivals. Frank Worthington and Peter Reid led the team back into the First Division in the swaggering late seventies, and Bruce Rioch paved the way for a job at Arsenal by taking the Trotters out of the doldrums once again in the early nineties, propelled by stars like John McGinlay, Jason McAteer and Alan Stubbs.
But what happened under Allardyce, well, that was something special.