Bolton Wanderers 4 Stockport County 1 ( EFL League 1 Play Off Final ) Sunday 24 May 2026
County`s quest for a place in the Championship hit the buffers today at Wembley where they slumped to 1-4 defeat at the hands of Bolton Wanderers. Anyone not at the game would conclude that County were outplayed by a better side, but they would not be telling the whole story. For sure Wanderers started firing on all cylinders taking just 3 minutes to surge into the lead through a goal by Ruben Rodrigues, but from there matters changed fairly rapidly as County equalised through Adama Sidibeh just 8 minutes later, only for County`s equaliser to be ruled out by VAR and an unbelievably naïve `explanation ` by Referee Mr Josh Smith –that was just plain wrong. No matter, and not for the first time, County had fallen foul of Refereeing `inadequacies ` in Play Off Finals ,and had a mountain to climb, which they started to quite impressively- Sidibeh feeding hungrily off prime service from Bailey to again equalise for the blues. This one stood, but I ...