JULIAN Darby hopes to hand over to the next manager of Bolton Wanderers with two straight wins in the bank.

Kevin Nolan’s Northampton Town come to the Toughsheet Stadium tonight hoping to dampen the buoyant atmosphere which followed the weekend’s win against Huddersfield Town.

A decision on the new manager is understood to be close but Darby, Andy Taylor and Andy Tutte will be in the dugout one last time, knowing three points could theoretically take the club into the top six.

“What are we, one point off the play-offs at the minute?” Darby told The Bolton News.

“It isn’t the worst place to be, I think there is everything still to play for with a long way to go before the end of the season.

“It has been a tough January. The boys have played seven games already, this is the eighth. And that’s incredible, what it takes out of their bodies and the mental energy you need too. But that’s football and it’s why we do it, they’ll get a good break in the summer.”

Darby says he has not been briefed about the new manager, nor the timescale of his appointment, but he is confident that the club he walks into is primed to play at a higher level of football.

“It’s just built to go up this place,” he said. “The infrastructure is here, the stadium, the training ground over the road is getting better and better all the time. We’ve got a fantastic fanbase and, what, 18,000 season tickets? In League One? Wow.

“No doubt they will pack the place again for the Northampton game, another 20,000 or so, especially after Saturday’s result.

“I think this place, this club, is all set up to play higher. And I’d say it is a fantastic opportunity for anyone.”

It is all a far cry from training at the Halls sweet factory or on any spare patches of land around Bolton, as Darby did in his early days with Wanderers in the eighties and nineties.

“They were still good times,” he said. “You relish those days. We didn’t have a training ground back then so anywhere would do.

“That was it – we loved it, we were just a bunch of apprentices coming through and four or five of us actually went on to play for the club.

“Mark Winstanley, Warren Joyce, Neil Redfearn, Jimmy Phillips – you had lads like Paul Allen, Simon Rudge, Steve Surridge, there were loads coming through. There was no money around so they had to look towards the youth.

“You had managers running half-marathons to pay the bills too, but you wouldn’t find me doing that!”

Steven Schumacher remains the odds-on favourite to succeed Ian Evatt, with several sources claiming he has already been interviewed for the post.

Wanderers have looked at other options too, however, and are keen to see the process through professionally, although an appointment now looks certain before the weekend when the team travel to face Reading.