just a quick question for bartman, do you know if petrov will start regularly?
Well, Owen Coyle seemed to have a bit of a fall-out with Petrov at the end of last season and played Taylor a lot instead, but he's gone to West Ham. So now his only real competition, at the moment, for starting on the left is our loyal Jamaican Ricardo Gardner, but he can also play Left-back or centre-midfield. So, all in all, I'd say unless he gets injured Martin Petrov will start pretty much all of our league games. He's also been playing in most of our pre-season friendlies, so I believe he and Coyle are getting on fine now.
P.S. On a slightly unrelated topic, anyone else notices that the four players Sam Allardyce has signed was West Ham ALL used to play for Bolton at some point; those being Kevin Nolan, Abdoulaye Faye, Joey O'Brien and Matty Taylor. I know that he managed the first 3 while he was at Bolton, but I'm not sure about Taylor. But for Christ Sake Big Sam, do you have to buy all your old players back? He's done that wherever he's been, a lot with El-Hadji Diouf, but I'm getting a bit tired of it now. I reckon he's slightly afraid to buy 'unknown' players, even more at West Ham now he has such a huge burden upon himself. He admitted that he'll get the sack if they fail to get promoted this season. To conclude simply, Big Sam should take some more risks in the players he buys (buying great players is what makes great managers) and stop resting on his laurels and using old Bolton players as fall-backs. Fin.