It all looked so very promising. A bright, sunny afternoon in London, a screamer from Gary Cahill, a marauding Fabrice Muamba, four goals and three points in the bag. The season could barely have started any better for Bolton. In the five games since, they have scored only four goals, conceded 16, lost all five games and now sit bottom of the table; a lot can change in 43 days.

When Owen Coyle arrived at Bolton in early January 2010, he was fêted as ‘the next big thing’ in British football management, the latest in a long line of Scots to come south of the border and flourish. In the early months of 2011 there were even suggestions that he might be the right man to take over at Liverpool, were the owners to look past Kenny Dalglish’s candidacy for the job on a permanent basis.

For fans who had suffered for two and a half years under desperately unpopular Gary Megson – there had been protests against him from almost the moment he was appointed – Coyle was seen as the antidote. An advocate of an adventurous, passing game and a man who had a strong link with the club, having been a key part of their 1995 promotion-winning campaign, Coyle was considered an ambitious appointment from chairman Phil Gartside. After two failures, Megson and Sammy Lee, who had taken the club backwards in the wake of Sam Allardyce’s departure, there was an expectation that Coyle would take them back towards those heady days.

It hasn’t quite panned out like that, however. There was an upturn in fortunes when he arrived from Burnley, after the hard start of a double-header against Arsenal they climbed from 19th to 14th by the end of the season. Safety was achieved by a fairly comfortable nine points and things were looking rosy. Things looked even better when they spent a few weeks in the top six during the early stages of the 2010-11 season, but a run of seven defeats and only two wins in their final nine games dropped them back down the table and to a familiar 14th position.

Added to the start that Bolton have made this season, it’s a run which has seen them pick up just nine points from a possible 45; two fewer than Roberto Di Matteo collected with West Brom in the 15 games before his dismissal.

When one moves on to consider the entirety of Coyle’s time at Bolton, there are some startling statistics. Whilst in all competitions Coyle’s win rate is significantly better than that of Megson – 35.06% compared to 27.55% – in the Premier League there is little to choose.

Coyle’s Bolton have won 19 of 64 Premier League matches, a win rate of 29.69%. Megson’s Bolton won 23 from 84 or 27.38%. The difference between the two equates to an extra 0.88 wins over the course of a season. Hardly the difference that had been expected, and is assumed to have been achieved.

This might all have been forgiven and ‘mid-table obscurity’ accepted were Bolton playing the sort of football upon which Coyle built his reputation at St. Johnstone and Burnley, but this, like Coyle’s success at the club, seems not to have materialised.

Back in May, Michael Cox of Zonal Marking wrote a piece in which he questioned Coyle’s style at Bolton. Stats were provided which showed that Bolton had one of the lowest average possession and pass completion ratios in the league, and played fewer short passes and more long balls than all but a couple of sides. It is no surprise that a side built around the strengths of Kevin Davies played in such a style, but it did pose the question as to why there was a general belief that Bolton played ‘good football’ under Coyle.

There is no doubt that he is trying to address the matter, in the season so far they have played fewer long balls (70 per game, down from 73 last season) and more short passes (321 per game, up from 274 last season), and that may have been part of the reason behind dropping Davies for the weekend’s trip to Arsenal. But the fact remains that Bolton play a more direct style than most in the league, and are certainly far from the “entertainment” that Gartside called for when appointing Coyle.

If Bolton have progressed since the days of Megson, both in terms of style of play and results, it is in very small steps. Whether by design or because of a lack of funds with which to significantly change the squad, Coyle is playing a brand of football which goes against the generally held perception of him as a coach. And unless results improve, there is the very real chance that Bolton will be involved in the sort of relegation fight they were trying to avoid, and that wonderful start in West London will see a million miles away.

Photograph courtesy of football.co.uk

Statistics used in this article were compiled using data from WhoScored.com and statto.com