International Ambitions (Part Three)

Bolton got nothing out of their visit to Craven Cottage and their manager Gary Megson had little cause for complaint. “I think it would have been harsh on Fulham if we had of done, but we got ourselves back in it with ten minutes to go,” he said. Bobby Zamora scored a fantastic goal, but Megson preferred blaming his defence for allowing him to shoot in the first place. “It was a good goal from Fulham’s point of view and Bobby’s,” he said. “Our defending was poor. The ball’s gone down the side; we should make sure it stays wide. Danny Shittu’s let him inside and the cover from Grétar Steinsson wasn’t quick enough. We had opportunities to make sure that he didn’t even get the opportunity to shoot. It wasn’t good enough.”

Megson was distinctly unimpressed with most of his players. “Kevin Davies has played well; Ricardo Gardner, I think has played well,” he said. “Aside from that we had a lot of people not at their best and when you’ve got that you are not going to win many football matches. When people come and say that they should now be in the team and we give them a chance, then they’ve got to take it and show it in the way they play. We’ve got to use the players that we’ve got. In the middle of the park we do keep the ball well. Davies is very good with the ball to feet, but as well as he played the difference was too much.” Meanwhile, his counterpart Roy Hodgson was satisfied. “I thought we created enough goal chances,” he said, “When you are scoring two goals with clear goal-scoring opportunities like that you’ve got to be happy with the way you’ve attacked.”

Bolton’s record signing Johan Elmander was injured, but enjoys his manager’s trust as does Kevin Davies. “We took a conscious decision and spent £15.7m in the summer and we could have brought in eight players for that amount of money,” said Megson. “We could have ended up with more players. I don’t think we would have got the quality that we’ve got, so we need the players to stay fit. We haven’t got enough people that score goals on a regular basis and when we sold Nic [Anelka] and then [El Hadj Diouf] Dioufy that was a big loss for a team that hasn’t scored a huge amount of goals in the past, so we need more and more people chipping in.” So does Bolton have a natural goal-scorer? “Kevin Davies has got four in seven,” he said. “Kevin Nolan has got a record of scoring goals, although he is not doing that at the moment, but he’s playing exceptionally well for us. Matthew Taylor will chip in for us with goals and other people have got to get in there and get goals and share it out amongst themselves, but we’re hopeful that Johan Elmander can do the things that he’s done in the past on the continent. He’s a class act.”

So where does that leave Riga Mustapha? He is a player who has scored goals in both the Netherlands and Spain where he helped Levante stay in La Liga for a season, netting twice as many as second highest scorer Olivier Kapo and his goals helped Sparta Rotterdam win promotion back to the Eredivisie as well. Bolton support Riga’s intention to play for Ghana and Megson thinks that his best position is probably up front, but he didn’t play there, so with goals needing to be shared out what did he think of Riga? “He really has got to learn how to play football in this country,” said Megson. “He carries the ball well and he wants to score all the goals, but there’s got to be another side to his game when we haven’t got the ball and he must adapt to the way that we play, because it can’t happen the other way around.” So where does this leave Riga’s ambition to play for the Black Stars?