Bolton Wanderers: Steven Schumacher simply cannot repeat Ian Evatt transfer mistake | OneFootball

Steven Schumacher may want an overhaul at Bolton Wanderers this summer but they will be keen to avoid mistakes of the past.

Bolton Wanderers are heading into a summer that many supporters will hope and expect to see an overhaul of their squad but that is something that should be warned against.

Wanderers have announced their retained list for the 2025/26 campaign with former captain Ricardo Santos, vice-captain Gethin Jones and goalkeeper Nathan Baxter among those that will be departing the club following the expiration of their contracts.

With those departures as well as Ian Evatt and Dion Charles leaving the club in January, it is the beginning of a new era and a real break from the past as Steven Schumacher gears up for his first summer at the Toughsheet Community Stadium.

The former Plymouth Argyle boss has already suggested to Bolton fans not to expect too much by way out of outgoings or a clear out because there are so many under contract at the club but it is clear that something does need to change – that doesn’t mean everything should change, though.

The setback of Bolton’s 2020 summer window

Having been bought by Football Ventures in August 2019 when it appeared as though the club was on the verge of being expelled from the EFL alongside Bury, they were relegated from League One after the COVID-19 affected 2019/20 season.

They had just six first-team players contracted to the club for the 2020/21 season and so Ian Evatt, with then Head of Football Operations Tobias Phoenix, embarked upon an extremely busy recruitment drive.

The Trotters brought in 14 players by the end of the first week of August with the season due to start in mid-September so it could be argued they had set themselves up well.

Things began to spiral, though, and Bolton eventually brought in a further seven players to bolster the squad it has to be said it ended up with the Wanderers squad looking messy and disorganised.

They had focused on quality initially with the arrivals of Eoin Doyle and Antoni Sarcevic before that turned into a scatter-gun approach to bring in quantity and numbers – which harmed Evatt as he tried to implement a sophisticated style of football.

Bolton ended up trying to shift players brought in over the course of the season to streamline their approach in the winter transfer window and then in windows moving forward.

They eventually secured promotion but only after rectifying their mistakes in the winter window, having actually left themselves in a relegation battle in League Two as late as February 2021.

Schumacher’s desire for change

Schumacher, like any manager, will want to put his own mark on a team and a squad – and that can be done in a couple of ways whether it be through coaching or through personnel.

After a fairly humiliating end to the season whereby Schumacher appears to have got away with a lot of criticism as a result of supporters’ apathy and, frankly, current dislike of much of the squad, Schumacher now looks set to shake things up in terms of personnel.

The retained list is out and Schumacher has already discussed the need for a different type of recruitment strategy this summer with Sporting Director Fergal Harkin beginning his work at Bolton this month following his departure from Standard Liege.

However, Schumacher has a squad of players that has had money spent on it and the bulk of it still achieved a third place finish in the 2023/24 campaign when it should have gained automatic promotion.

Improvement is required from both the players and the manager himself but there is evidence that there are some good players in the squad, as Schumacher stated when he got the job, but it needs an evolution rather than a revolution.

There is a nucleus and a foundation to work with and not everything needs ripping up. The apparent desire from supporters, and seemingly the manager as well, to almost start afresh will concern some Bolton fans as it rings bells of 2020 and the mess that they had got themselves in to.