Darren Fletcher will be shattered.He put in a full 90 minute shift against Bolton’s kids in the Manchester Senior Cup Final on Monday night.

It was Orient’s first team that are in good form compared to Wigan’s reserves/squad players who don’t play together much and aren’t good enough for the first team that played against Bolton though.I think the players Wigan had out wanted to beat Bolton but were not in the same class as the visitors as the decision had been made by Dave Whelan that the FA Cup didn’t matter.
As news filtered through of the side Wigan had picked and Bolton’s comfortable victory my mind turned to the old time Wiganers and what they would make of their club throwing an FA Cup tie at home to Bolton Wanderers of all clubs.I hope that Birmingham City have the same attitude about the quarter final and then perhaps we could play West Ham reserves in the semi final.

re: the goalie

Al Habsi has only had one decent stretch in the Bolton side, he played the last 10 matches of the 2007/08 season because Jaaskalainen was injured.The first match of that run was the 0-1 defeat at Wigan a few days after losing at Sporting Lisbon.The goal was a high ball into the box which should have been dealt with.

When I logged on last night I noticed Bigroy was also on.Bigroy will remember the end of that season.With 5 games left Bolton were 6 points behind Reading and after winning the first match faced away games at Middlesbrough and Tottenham.Bigroy was keen to offer his opinions on the Bolton rivals site about the relegation battle at that time and felt Bolton had to take 4 points from the Riverside and White Hart Lane to have a realistic chance of surviving because the last match was away at Chelsea.
Thanks to magnificent goal keeping in the first half at Boro, Bolton scraped a 1-0 win up there and followed that up with a point at Tottenham again thanks to Al Habsi.A home win and a clean sheet against Sunderland was then enough to keep us up.

Jaaskalainen was fit again at the start of the following season and Al Habsi hasn’t got a look in apart from the odd cup tie here and there.I don’t agree with that and think Al Habsi is Jaakalainen’s equal but at the end of the day Bolton have had 4 managers who have had more faith in the Finn and none who rated Al Habsi more.

Bollux! Noblot are a very experienced premier league side who have also ventured in Europe. We [the royal we] are not that nieve or cocky enough to think these teams “should” be beaten. :[/quote]

That’s correct, although curiously Bolton qualifying for Europe helped Wigan because Bolton’s two Premier League defeats on Wigan’s ground came on weekends after trips to Bulgaria and Portugal in the Uefa Cup.