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Phil Parkinson, Bolton's brave boss, shows that crisis-club managers are special

Bolton Wanderers' manager Phil Parkinson during the Sky Bet Championship match between Hull City and Bolton Wanderers at KCOM Stadium on January 1, 2019 in Hull, England
Parkinson is still waiting for last season’s bonus, but carries on regardless Credit: Andrew Kearns - CameraSport

Management can be a lonely game at the best of times. Even the most successful can feel isolated.

Sir Alex Ferguson recalled in his 2013 autobiography how there were times when “you would give anything not to be alone with your thoughts” and days when, squirrelled away in his office, he would “long for that rap on the door”.

Yet managing crisis clubs is a particularly specialised line of work that requires deep wells of patience and self-restraint, resilience, gallows humour and an almost superhuman level of concentration, given the seemingly endless array of off-field distractions that would consume certain individuals.

Managers of these clubs could have their own therapy groups. It is a good bet, for example, that Blackpool manager Terry McPhillips has a much better idea of what Phil Parkinson is going through at the moment with Bolton Wanderers than, say, Frank Lampard at Derby County. That is not to disparage Lampard in any way, but managers swimming in football’s polluted pools have concerns that extend well beyond just winning football matches, even if that, ultimately, remains their overwhelming priority.

There is a certain irony about a manager – who has still to receive a contractual bonus for the remarkable rescue act he pulled off nine months ago – being asked to do it all over again, but this is the demoralising world that Parkinson inhabits at Bolton.

He carries a look that is both battle-hardened and world weary, yet still manages to retain a smile and a sense of humour which, working for a chairman such as Ken Anderson at a club who are lurching from one crisis to the next, really must take some doing. 

Bolton Wanderers manager Phil Parkinson reacts to the action from the touchline
Bolton are in the bottom three and battling for survival Credit: David Blunsden/Action Plus via Getty Images

Football is full of people who talk in overly sensationalist terms, but you know things are bad when an honest, hard-working man who has no interest in the spotlight says thing like “these next 20 games are bigger than anything the club’s had in its history”. Bolton are third-bottom of the Championship, three points adrift of safety, with one win in 16. The current top four all lie in wait over the next seven league games.

They survived by the skin of their teeth last season, an 88th-minute winner from Aaron Wilbraham on the final day securing a dramatic 3-2 triumph over Nottingham Forest, but Parkinson knows only too well it will take an even greater effort for his hotchpotch of loan signings and free transfers to repeat the escape act over the coming months.

Unlike Parkinson, Wilbraham got his bonus. Yet the list of people and institutions to whom Bolton owe money is so long that Parkinson must join a disorderly queue behind the Professional Footballers’ Association, Norwich City, HMRC, the Stellar Group football agency and the trustees of the club’s late owner, Eddie Davies, who are £5 million out of pocket.

On the pitch, none of this matters. Sympathy for Bolton’s plight does not translate into points. Parkinson and his players just have to make the best of the bad hand they have been dealt. Anderson inanely quoting Winston Churchill in rambling official statements is all well and good but it does not solve the problem of how Parkinson replaces striker Christian Doidge, now back with Forest Green Rovers after being caught in the crossfire of a very public slanging match between two chairmen.

Parkinson is the one who has to pick up his players, be strong and shield them from the chaos, but who picks up the manager in those dark moments? He deserves better.

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