Bolton wanderers head to Wembley Stadium on Sunday afternoon to face Stockport County in the Sky Bet League One Play-Off Final, with a place in the Sky Bet Championship on the line. Steven Schumacher’s side are 90 minutes from reaching the second tier for the first time in seven years.
Wembley and Stockport County
Bolton meet a Stockport team that finished two points and two places above them in the table. The final starts at 1pm, and the margin for error is gone: promotion goes to the winner, while the other side leaves Wembley still in League One.
Schumacher said the aim has been the same since he arrived at the club. “We want to be in the mix, we want to try and get ourselves into the Championship.” He added: “It will mean everything, it really will. 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. But we've got a lot of work to do. We know we're 90 minutes away, potentially, from achieving what we all set out to do and let's hope we can go and do it.”
Bolton Route Through Bradford City
Bolton reached Wembley by beating Bradford City over two legs. Xavier Simons settled the second leg with a second-half goal at Valley Parade in a 1-0 win that sealed a 2-0 aggregate victory. That result followed the first leg and left Schumacher’s team with a direct path into the final.
Stockport took the same route from their own semi-final, beating Stevenage in both legs. Louie Barry and Kyle Wootton scored in a 2-0 win at Edgeley Park, and County advanced 3-0 on aggregate.
April Draw Sets the Rematch
The clubs last met in April, when they drew 2-2 at the Toughsheet Community Stadium. Johnny Kenny scored in the 38th minute for Bolton, and Ben Osborn later turned the ball into his own net to help force the share of the points.
Support at Wembley will be heavy on the Bolton side. More than 28,000 supporters are set to travel to London, and Schumacher said the journey is not a simple one on a Sunday, with an early kick-off and Bank Holiday weekend train disruption making it difficult. “It's a huge credit to the amount of fans that are going down. 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.”
Dave Challinor set the tone from the Stockport side, calling it “the biggest step and the hardest step, but it's an opportunity, and that's all you can ask for.” He added that his side are going to Wembley to win, which leaves the final with no middle ground: one club moves up, and one stays behind.
