Former Bolton striker Johan Elmander is still involved in football

A long-suffering Bolton Wanderers supporter first and foremost, who manages to balance the heartache of the Whites with being a freelance sports writer. Masquerading as nuanced and objective but always having a bias or ulterior motive behind the writing.

Johan Elmander remains Bolton Wanderers’ club-record signing and also had a spell in England with Norwich City – and he remains involved in football to this day.

After knocking on the door of UEFA Champions League qualification in the mid-2000s, Bolton sought to bounce back to those heights in the summer of 2008, a year after the departure of Sam Allardyce and six months after the sale of Nicolas Anelka.

Then, under the management of Gary Megson, Wanderers used the money from the Anelka sale to bring in the likes of Gretar Steinsson, Matty Taylor and Gary Cahill in January 2008 as well as Fabrice Muamba, Riga Mustapha and Danny Shittu the following summer.

Having spent fairly heavily by theirs and Premier League mid-table standards at the time, the marquee arrival that summer was the club-record signing of Johan Elmander from Toulouse.

Elmander is someone who largely divides opinion in Bolton and experienced a forgettable stint at Norwich, but his expertise remains sought-after in Sweden.

Perhaps contributed to by the success that Bolton had enjoyed and the players that had recently graced the Reebok Stadium in the 2000s, Johan Elmander arrived in Lancashire under immediate pressure to perform.

On debut for The Trotters, the signing of Elmander initially appeared to be a masterstroke as he scored before half-time in a 3-1 defeat of newly-promoted Stoke City at the Reebok.

Elmander, who arrived at Bolton for a fee believed to be in the region of £8.2 million, would go on to score just four more goals for The Whites that season as they continued to be dragged towards relegation – with all four of those goals coming in a four-game stretch between mid-November and mid-December, including some well taken strikes in victories away at both Middlesbrough and Sunderland – scoring a superb brace against the latter.

Johan Elmander's Bolton stats

Despite those brief glimpses of his quality, a lack of physicality and an inability to be much of a presence alongside Kevin Davies led to Elmander becoming more of a peripheral figure in the 2009-10 season, where he scored just two goals and managed just 15 starts.

In the 2010-11 campaign, though, and Owen Coyle’s first full season in charge of Bolton, Elmander began to show real quality, beginning with a brace on the second day of the season in a 3-1 defeat of West Ham United at Upton Park in August.

Those would be two of nine goals that Elmander would have netted by Boxing Day as Bolton looked set to once again legitimately challenge for the European spots in the Premier League.

Included in that run was a famous goal in a 3-2 defeat of Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux in November and a suggestion that the technical quality of the Swede was finally now being harnessed by Coyle in his final contracted campaign at the club.

In the second half of the season, Elmander found himself shifted around the side and so the goals did begin to dry up again, albeit not without a special moment in which he scored Bolton’s opener in a 3-2 victory at St Andrew’s against Birmingham City in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup to book their first trip to the new Wembley Stadium.

That day at Wembley lives in infamy among the Bolton fanbase, though, as Elmander played in central midfield as Wanderers collapsed to a 5-0 demolition at the hands of Stoke City.

The decision for Elmander to be left exposed in an unnatural position came as a result of an injury to Stuart Holden and the form of Daniel Sturridge alongside Kevin Davies, leading Coyle to cram him into the side – and a week prior to their hiding at Wembley had seen Elmander performed superbly in a 3-0 defeat of eventually relegated West Ham.

At home to a beleaguered West Ham, with Sturridge partnering Davies, was a very different proposition to an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley, with the cup-tied Sturridge replaced by the brilliant finisher, but fairly immobile, Ivan Klasnic.

Bolton did not recover, despite a defeat against Arsenal a week later, and lost their final five games of the campaign to dwindle from European contention and to 14th – dropping into the bottom half of the table on the final day after being spending the bulk of the season no lower than eighth.

The miserable conclusion to that season would be the conclusion to Elmander’s inconsistent and immensely frustrating time at Bolton as he left the club on a free transfer and moved to Turkish giants Galatasaray.

Under Fatih Terim, Elmander formed a part of a Galatasaray side that won the Super Lig in successive seasons, playing alongside the likes of Felipe Melo, Albert Riera, Emmanuel Eboue, Didier Drogba and Wesley Sneijder.

In the summer of 2013, two years after departing a Bolton side now in the Championship, Elmander returned to England and once again endured a forgettable debut campaign in a loan stint at Norwich City.

Elmander notched just three goals in 33 appearances for The Canaries, two of which came in a League Cup second round tie against Bury, as Norwich succumbed to relegation themselves.

Elmander, who earned 85 caps and scored 20 goals for Sweden and played at FIFA World Cup 2006 as well as UEFA EURO 2008 and UEFA EURO 2012, returned to Northern Europe after his stint at Norwich.

After three seasons with Brondby in the Danish Superliga, the striker returned to Orgryte for the 2017 season in the Swedish second-tier, having made his first steps in professional football with OIS after coming through at Holmalund.

A respected figure in his homeland after forming an effective partnership with Zlatan Ibrahimovic at international level, Elmander has gone on to have a varied post-playing career in both Sweden and back at Galatasaray.

After spending time as a scout with the Turkish giants, he also spent time as assistant coach to Soren Borjesson at OIS in 2020 after the departure of Keith Millen.

Elmander is now working in the media and providing expert analysis for Sveriges Radio on the Swedish national team and is forging a new career in that realm.

The former Bolton and Norwich striker has worked in that role as both a pundit and commentator since 2021 and has a contract with the broadcaster that runs through until 2028.