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<font size=”1″>&nbsp;by&nbsp;<a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/chalkboards”>Guardian Chalkboards</a></font>

 by Guardian Chalkboards

Blackburn 1 – 2 Bolton 20/12/11

With both teams managers under pressure especially Steve Kean, this was a so called “six-pointer”. Blackburn were a point ahead before the game and with them having Liverpool next and Bolton playing Newcastle both team would have wanted to win this to at least give them some confidence.

The game started rather scrappily with both teams giving away free kicks in what was a quite uninteresting game tactically. The two teams started out In 4-4-2/4-4-1-1 shapes so there were the obvious battles on the pitch, the wingers against the fullbacks the central midfielders up against each other and the four strikers each having a direct opponent. It was interesting that Ngog started over Kevin Davies as Blackburn generally play deep. Klasnic and Hoilett dropped deeper without the ball though Hoilett generally played off  Yakubu. Ngog  very early on was drifting out wide to the flank and this is where the first goal came from as he got it wide in the box for Davies to score.

After the goal Bolton were more dynamic in their 4-4-2 as Reo-Coker surged forward often and left Muamba to sit deeper as Bolton didn’t have to worry about being over ran as it was 2vs2 in the middle and looked more likely to create something.

Bolton on the other hand were very lacklustre as they often tried to play it long to Yakubu. There were three problems with this:

1. Zat Knight easily dominated Yakubu
2. If Yakubu did win any of the headers Muamba could easily stop Hoilett from getting anything from it as well as Alonso and Steinsson stopping Blackburn’s wide players from getting any scraps
3. N’zonzi and Dunn made no attempt to get in support, so as I said in the first two points, making it easy for Bolton.

The only way Blackburn looked like they could really penetrate was by Formica cutting in with Pederson on the overlap and its surprising keane didn’t encourage this more. On the other flank Blackburn were again predictable as Vukcevic did look to cut inside however with Lowe not on the overlap Alonso could just follow him inside. If Making Dunn stay deeper to dictate play was Kean’s idea, they didn’t give him enough of the ball however he did show what he could do sporadically by spraying balls to Hoilett when he drifted wide.

Blackburn’s best moments came when Formica drifted inside and used his vision and technical ability and when Hoilett pulled out wide and used his pace.

2^nd half

After the break Kean seemed to realise where Formica and Hoilett could do damage and switched. As Blackburn looked for goals Blackburn’s forwards started to push up more to stop Bolton playing from the back but for some reason N’zonzi and Dunn didn’t, this meant Bolton’s midfield especially   Reo-Coker were in masses of space to counter but couldn’t capitalise and made poor decisions on the ball.

Late on in the game Rochina and Goodwillie came on and Rochina played closer to the centre than Vukcevic and Goodwillie played alongside Yakubu. This occupied knight for the first goal as Bolton didn’t have a spare man at the back and Yakubu was one on one with Cahill to score.

Very late on in the Game Bolton changed to a 4-1-4-1 with Pratley coming on for Klasnic which forced Blackburn into wide areas where Bolton could deal with crosses all day long.

A good win for Bolton however made very easy for them by Blackburn.