Nervy Bolton must be pressured at home

Bolton are having a pretty tough time of it of late. Their last three games have not brought them any points and 20th place in the Championship is surely not where they expected to be at this stage of the season. Still, that is where they are and their players will be trying to get back to the home form that gave them a victory against Doncaster Rovers back in early December.

All season the Whites have only had six wins which is why they are near the bottom. One of those victories was against AFCB when I thought Bolton played the typical away match of soaking up pressure and playing on the break. There was little about their team on that day that really frightened me, but I would expect an even harder task away at the Reebok Stadium.

Dougie Freedman has not yet got Bolton playing to anything like the levels I expected. He did so well at Crystal Palace, but as Eddie Howe knows it is not easy moving so far away to manage a team in this division. Over the transfer window he has brought in Liam Trotter on loan, who was in Millwall's midfield and Yannick Bastos who is a winger and a Luxembourg international player. Freedman will surely be hoping that Lukas Jutkiewicz who was signed from Middlesbrough this January comes up with the goals, because David Ngog got a move to Swansea for the rest of the season, while Jermaine Beckford has been injured and may be short of form if he is able to play.

The defeat that must have sent shock waves through the club was the 7-1 demolition job that reading did on Bolton  on 18 January. That came on the back of December's news that the club were £163.8m in debt having made a whopping loss of £50.7m for the year ending June 2013.

So the match against the Cherries is a pretty vital one for Bolton to try and rescue something out of this awful season having also been dumped out of the FA Cup by Cardiff City. These are worrying times at Bolton because relegation could be disastrous for such a club that was in the Premiership in 2011/12.

Bolton Wanderers home league form:
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AFCB Away league form:
WWWDL

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