BOLTON //Repetition can be a damaging process. Before they were booed off again, Bolton Wanderers contrived to repeat past failings to cement their position in the relegation zone.
For the eighth time in nine games at the Reebok Stadium, they were beaten. For the fourth time in the league this season, they had a player dismissed. For the 30th and 31st times, their defence was breached.
Each is an unwanted landmark, Owen Coyle's men heading the leader boards for home defeats, dismissals and concessions.
The consequence is inevitable. They are deep in trouble and, if a demanding early-season fixture list initially accounted for their struggles, now problems have become entrenched. Losing seems less a habit than an addiction.
"There's no getting away from the stigma of being in the bottom three," Coyle said. "It's been a horrible couple of months."
Everton, in comparison, have had a terrific couple of games. They have traded a relegation struggle for eighth place in the space of eight days that have brought back-to-back wins. The latest was sealed by goals from Marouane Fellaini and the substitute Apostolos Vellios.
It was a victory they thoroughly deserved. The marauding Leighton Baines was the game's outstanding individual, a constant presence in everything his side did on the left flank. Fellaini, now the club's best-paid player, illustrated why Everton rewarded him with a five-year contract last week.
David Moyes's men played with conviction and determination, rendering the absence of six injured players an irrelevance.
Yet the game altered irrevocably in the 20th minute. "A huge turning point," Coyle said.
He had made David Wheater his makeshift right-back, a decision that backfired when the central defender illustrated his technical failings. His inability to retain the ball prompted a reckless, if scarcely malicious, challenge.
Having controlled the ball with his first touch, his second was poor, sending the ball squirming away towards Diniyar Bilyaletdinov. Wheater lunged in, his studs landing in the Russian's foot. Wheater had to go.
"In my day, it would have been a yellow card," Coyle said. "The rules are if your studs are showing, you leave yourself open to a red card. I can't say it surprised me."
While Bilyaletdinov spurned a fine opening, Bolton held on until half time. But they have proved unable to keep clean sheets in close games.
"We have lost two soft goals from our point of view," Coyle said. "The [one at the] start of the second half, to me, was avoidable."
From Everton's perspective, it was excellent. "A really good goal, a well-worked goal," enthused Moyes. Leon Osman linked up with Baines, the latter guiding his low cross into the path of Fellaini. He finished emphatically.
Baines played a part in the second, too. His deep cross was met on the volley by Tim Cahill, sliding in to set up Vellios. Four minutes after his arrival, the young Greek scored his third of the season.
Sandwiching the goals, Ivan Klasnic could have equalised, Tim Howard saving well, while at the other end Baines arrowed a shot over the bar and Cahill had a header brilliantly saved by Jussi Jaaskelainen, with Louis Saha unable to convert the rebound. It mattered not.
Everton have long proved themselves able to extricate themselves from problematic positions. It is a skill Bolton now need to display.
sports@thenational.ae
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
On Instagram: @WithHopeUAE
Although social media can be harmful to our mental health, paradoxically, one of the antidotes comes with the many social-media accounts devoted to normalising mental-health struggles. With Hope UAE is one of them.
The group, which has about 3,600 followers, was started three years ago by five Emirati women to address the stigma surrounding the subject. Via Instagram, the group recently began featuring personal accounts by Emiratis. The posts are written under the hashtag #mymindmatters, along with a black-and-white photo of the subject holding the group’s signature red balloon.
“Depression is ugly,” says one of the users, Amani. “It paints everything around me and everything in me.”
Saaed, meanwhile, faces the daunting task of caring for four family members with psychological disorders. “I’ve had no support and no resources here to help me,” he says. “It has been, and still is, a one-man battle against the demons of fractured minds.”
In addition to With Hope UAE’s frank social-media presence, the group holds talks and workshops in Dubai. “Change takes time,” Reem Al Ali, vice chairman and a founding member of With Hope UAE, told The National earlier this year. “It won’t happen overnight, and it will take persistent and passionate people to bring about this change.”
At a glance
Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year
Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month
Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30
Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse
Defence: New high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth
Housing: Housebuilding to reach its highest in 40 years, with planning reforms helping generate an extra £3.4bn for public finances
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
MANDOOB
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more from Janine di Giovanni
How Islam's view of posthumous transplant surgery changed
Transplants from the deceased have been carried out in hospitals across the globe for decades, but in some countries in the Middle East, including the UAE, the practise was banned until relatively recently.
Opinion has been divided as to whether organ donations from a deceased person is permissible in Islam.
The body is viewed as sacred, during and after death, thus prohibiting cremation and tattoos.
One school of thought viewed the removal of organs after death as equally impermissible.
That view has largely changed, and among scholars and indeed many in society, to be seen as permissible to save another life.
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
