Man Utd U21s - Papa John's Trophy

The date of the game is provisional depending on england fixture

Could we have asked to play the game at the weekend? Almost two weeks off in a rare quiet month for us. No England match. Surely would have got a better crowd Saturday or Sunday this weekend and that helps U21 team(who may have had a match but surely easy to reschedule)

I don't want to start a new thread about this World record attempt at the Carol service concert, so i'll just bung it here.
all for a good cause , so don't want to be be too much a of Scrooge in critique-ing it, but think a word does need to be said about wild optimism and
planning and realistic expectations.
nothing wrong with some big talk but back it up. Muhammed Ali.. i am the greatest. big talk. backed it up.
talk big but fail badly comes across like a deluded X Factor contestant, and shades of the manager, with his hype talk...best team in lge etc.
don't get me wrong. well done on the concert. good for the charities. but delivery matters. the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
i'm sure when Leeds ( or us, any other club ) got into financial difficulties, they we'ren't aiming to do so. all aiming to do good things.
over-stretch and problems hit. you need to be able to trust the owners to have their heads screwed on, and know how to deliver.


it's been hyped so much on facebook. even on BBC local news NWT, yesterday .

www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/23184722.bolton-wanderers-guinness-world-record-christmas-carol/

www.bwfc.co.uk/news/2022/december/10000-signed-up-to-sing/

they normally hold it in the Premier suite, which holds approx 2000. i've been several times.
was planning to go to this but a late pull-out by a friend scuppered it for me.

the world record attempt would have needed 25k+, so virtually full stadium. the event was totally free, apart from parking charges.
me and my partner have been discussing it for weeks. I've thought we'd struggle to break it, whereas my partner presumed
as they'd hyped it so much, they must be confident to give it a real good go , even if they fail narrowly, getting various schools
involved from across the NW.

yet all the pics i've seen the top tiers aren't even open. in the Mcginlay v T Kelly legends charity game a few years ago,
that same set up with all lower tiers full only got approx 10k. that's quite a margin to fail by considering it's been flogged
as "be part of history" . cold weather might have put a few off, but i don't think they had walk ups it was ticket only I think.
imagine getting the Guinness adjudicator down to officiate on that !? .
still bit early, but the reporting of the actual crowd has been a bit Pravda so far. talk about embarassing climb down.
seen some comments saying would have been better on the day on a family fun day match , either before or after , so you take a 18k to 20k crowd
and boost it up with school kids & groups etc, & you stand a chance of getting close to the target.

back to the actual game tonight, I wondered who was actual fave tonight with the bookies.

well, we are 2/5 faves. man utd 6/1, draw 3/1.

Did they expect to get 25k+, when we were premier league and up until recently we were not allowed to kick off before 8pm because of the middlebrook traffic but the Carol service was allowed a 7-8 time with 25k expected.

Cynically having to register with the club like the membership scheme seemed odd to me as well as payment for parking.

5th in the league but don't doubt that we will fall like a stone if we continue because there's about 6 points between us and 15th and I don't back us beating anyone.

Papa John's and a Wembley trip doesn't interest me. Probably Evatt uses it for his own ego and to get more belly strokes off the owner. All a bit too comfortable for him.

In fairness I hope the fans that have gone to Unibol or purchased an ifollow stream get their day at Wembley. (Think anyone who has ticket stubs should get their Wembley ticket for free) but this isn't our cup final (its not the old enemy) and I'm hopeful that soon we won't even be in this cup.

Much as I am enjoying the game (as I couldn’t care less about the Pizza cup)

THIS IS OUR FIRST TEAM!!!!!!!

No wonder we get done so often in this league, this is a weak effort and those 11 shirts should be ashamed to be 0-0 at half time

My take on it and I don’t really care if you don’t share my view, Evatt must go, if we are to progress.

Yes, we might just win this games, although there’s still every chance we could lose it, but when that’s your side to face Exeter next week, Evatt just cannot do it, he cannot motivate us to victory and the players we have are just not doing it under his ‘guidance’

Evatt OUT