Having guided Bolton through the Fabrice Muamba situation a few months back, Owen Coyle was shown the door at Bolton on Tuesday.

Coyle, dignified to the end, said what a great privelege it had been to manage the Trotters.

A Chris Eagles penalty miss at Millwall on Saturday, coupled with the Lions snatching a late winner, was enough to bring the curtain down on Coyle’s tenure in the Reebok hot seat. Bolton currently have one point less than Charlton

Bolton – like Charlton – were relegated after becoming a more-or-less established Premier League outfit. The financial problems caused if a club does not make a rapid return to the top-flight are all too familiar to Charlton fans.

Bromley resident, Mick McCarthy, and former Addicks boss, Alan Curbishley, are amongst the early favourites for the Bolton job. Whether Curbishley would be prepared to uproot his family and move north is doubtful. McCarthy has managed all over the country and would have no such qualms but is he, or Curbishley, the right man to deliver instant promotion?

McCarthy certainly has an excellent record of taking clubs up but he is not really an ‘instant fix’ type of manager.

One possibility apparently is for the Trotters to appoint a short term or caretaker manager, then make a move to take Sam Allardyce back to his spiritual home.

Allardyce fell out with Bolton chairman, Phil Gartside, but things appear to have been resolved between the pair. Though he has taken West Ham back to the Premier League, Allardyce is not universally popular at Upton Park.

If he did fancy another stint at the Reebok, who would West Ham turn to? It could be another case of a manager returning to his spiritual home, a certain Harry Redknapp is currently out of work….