Steven Schumacher said promotion would mean everything as Bolton Wanderers prepare to face Stockport County in the League One play-off final at Wembley on Sunday. The Bolton manager said the club’s push to reach the Championship has been the objective since he arrived, and that the final gives his side the chance to finish the job.
Bolton reached Wembley after beating Bradford City 2-0 on aggregate in the semi-finals, leaving them one win away from a return to the Championship for the first time in seven years. Stockport finished the regular season two points and two places above Bolton, adding another layer to a final that now feels like a direct test of where the clubs stand.
“We want to be in the mix, we want to try and get ourselves into the Championship,” Schumacher said. “It will mean everything, it really will.”
He added that the brief when he took over had been clear. “It’s been the objective since I came to the club, to try and get into the Championship, so it’s going to mean so much,” he said.
Bolton are playing in their third play-off campaign in four seasons, and the club’s recent history at Wembley still hangs over this one. They lost the play-off final to Oxford United two years ago, and only Josh Sheehan remains from the starting line-up that was beaten 2-0 that day.
Schumacher said the players know what the occasion demands. “They’re understand what it looks like,” he said, before stressing that the squad must handle the pressure together. “We feel as though we’ve earned this right to be in the last game of the season and now it’s about trying to perform to the best of our ability and make sure that we get the job done.”
Bolton’s preparation has also been complicated by the loss of Eoin Toal, who is ruled out after suffering a hamstring injury in the second leg of the semi-final win at Bradford. Even so, Schumacher said he believes his side have enough to finish the job if they stay composed and stick to their plan.
“We go there with a good mentality, a good frame of mind that we know that if we perform as well as we can, if we stick together as a group, then we’ve got enough in our squad to get the result that we all desperately want,” he said.
The final carries added weight for supporters too. Close to 30,000 Bolton fans could attend Wembley, but Schumacher warned that travel will not be simple on a Bank Holiday weekend. “It’s a Sunday, early kick-off at one o’clock, not easy to get to on a Bank Holiday weekend with train disruption all over the place, so for people travelling down we really appreciate it and we’re going to do our best,” he said.
Bolton were among the founding members of the English Football League in 1888, and now the club that helped shape the competition is trying to climb back into the division above. On Sunday at one o’clock, against a Stockport side that finished just ahead of them, Schumacher’s team will have the chance to turn a season-long aim into a place in the Championship.
