WANDERERS prepared to wave goodbye to one of the worst seasons in their history at Fulham’s Craven Cottage in May 2016 when a whisper raced around the press box.

Completely out of the blue, caretaker boss Jimmy Phillips had been told by co-chairman Ken Anderson to pull his star defender Rob Holding from the squad after Arsenal had shown an interest in signing him.

The rumour seemed barely credible at the time. For while Holding had been the only bright spot of a wretched campaign, in which Bolton were about to lose a record 26th game, he had been a first team regular for less than 12 months.

But sure enough as Bolton’s players ran out for the warm-up from Fulham’s distinctive corner tunnel the academy graduate was nowhere to be seen.

He did emerge – sneaking out just before kick-off to sit among the substitutes – but fans would never again see him wearing a Bolton shirt for a competitive game.

Four years on, and the Tameside lad is a bona fide Premier League defender. A protracted move to the Emirates meant he did come back to Bolton for pre-season and accompanied new boss Phil Parkinson’s squad to a training camp in Sweden – but looking back at the bizarre way he was informed about the dream move, Holding is still left scratching his head.

“Jimmy Phillips was the caretaker manager and when I got off the coach he pulled me aside and said ‘I can’t play you tomorrow’.

“I was like ‘could you not have told me this three or four hours ago before I got on the bus?’

“He’d been told by the chairman that he wasn’t allowed to play me – but had no idea why.

“I shot up to my room in the hotel and got in touch with my agent, and he said that Arsenal were interested.

“It was a weird situation but it was an off-season of sitting around and waiting to see if something would happen.”

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Wanderers had turned down a £1million offer from Reading earlier that season for Holding but reports persisted of interest from the Premier League, with Everton and Bournemouth the teams most strongly linked.

Arsenal’s involvement was a bombshell – not only to Gunners fans, but also to the player himself.

Holding had diligently stepped up from Under-23s level to make his full debut against Burton Albion early that season. Through months of off-the-field financial issues his performances had been consistent but even after the Fulham game, the conversation with his agent and several weeks of haggling between the clubs, he was still expecting to line-up for Bolton in August.

“It never crossed my mind to leave Bolton that season,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d be on anyone’s radar because I’d just got into the team.

“Going through the off-season I was preparing myself for League One football.

“I went to Thailand back-packing with four of my mates and started pre-season with Phil Parkinson and his team.

“People say ‘would you have stayed had things been different at Bolton?’ But I don’t think you can turn down the chance to play for Arsenal. You never know if you’ll get that opportunity with both hands “I knew they (Bolton) were taking their time because they wanted to get as much as they could, which is understandable given the financial trouble they were in.

“They had to make as much as they could from an asset, and that’s the way football works.

“If I could have made more money for Bolton I would have been happy to go for a higher price.”

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Arsenal eventually paid around £2million, with appearance bonuses which were later controversially cashed-in by Anderson before they had matured.

Part of the chairman’s rationale had been that there were no guarantees that Holding was going to become a first team regular and – in fairness – the move to Arsenal even had those close to him asking questions.

“Obviously I didn’t know if I was going to be good enough to play there,” he said.

“I remember my agent and my dad sitting me down and asking: ‘Do you think you’ll be good enough to play for Arsenal?’ “I’m like ‘erm, yeah I do!’ I had to take that chance.”

Holding’s evolution through the system at Bolton had never been predictable.

The club had considered releasing him late in his teens and the player remembers coach Nicky Spooner having to get him into line.

“I remember a sit down I had with him at Under-15s and I had a bit of an attitude, I’d been messing about here and there and he said ‘you’ve got the talent but you have got to pull your finger out,’” he said.

“It was a bit of a wake-up call, I pushed on and it re-focused me.”

David Lee and Tony Kelly also played prominent roles in Holding’s development at Under-18s level, before Iain Brunskill and Andy Hughes sharpened him up in the Under-23s.

“When we were out running in pre-season and David was joining in some of the runs, he was out in front of us and we had to catch him. He sets the standard and once he’s doing that, it falls into place.

“Tony kept the morale and the spirit high between the lads and if anyone came in and felt a bit down that day, or tired, then he’d crack a joke and lift them all.”

Even though he had shown promise, it was still somewhat of a surprise when Neil Lennon drafted him into the Championship side at the start of 2015/16.

Holding recalls Middlesbrough’s Stewart Downing “taking the mick” on one trip to the Riverside but as realisation started to dawn on Bolton, then starting to suffer major issues after Eddie Davies had pulled his funding, the regular football was a necessary distraction.

“It was a wake-up call,” he said. “The financial side didn’t really affect me because I was a first-year pro at the time on a low wage. Other lads around us were affected more by it.

“It must be hard playing week-in, week-out not knowing if your pay cheque is going to come that month.

“It is difficult and I felt for the lads but I was focussed on what I had to do, playing football.

“The older lads had kids and families who relied on that monthly wage. I’ve no idea how they managed it because your confidence goes down, your performance, that season the inevitable ended up happening but it was still about playing each week for me.

“The players we had, we should have been keeping us in that league, but the atmosphere that was going around, the grey cloud over it, it was difficult to handle.”

The passing of chairman Phil Gartside at the start of 2016 marked a sad time at Wanderers, who had slipped into serious disrepair by the turn of the year.

Manager Lennon got caught up in a tabloid scandal, the club had been placed into a transfer embargo by the league, and takeover efforts by ex-striker Dean Holdsworth were becoming increasingly frantic.

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Despite all the chaos, Holding recalls the mood inside the camp being surprisingly good.

“You had good characters in there,” he said. “Max Clayton would always be singing. And, to be fair, he was pretty good. Dannsy is massively into his music as well.

“We were able to put the bad things that were going on to the back of our minds and find comfort in being around each other.

“They were top people and I’ll always speak highly of them.”

As Wanderers and Arsenal haggled over the asking price for Holding, the club’s future hung in the balance.

The Supporters’ Trust was launched and the summer kicked-off with a big fundraising game involving legends of the club’s past.

Holding and his fellow academy graduate Zach Clough were asked to be managers – and during the game he found out that a call-up to Gareth Southgate’s England Under-21s squad for the Toulon Tournament was on the cards.

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“I actually found out at half time during the legends game,” he told the Lion of Vienna Podcast.

“I went in at half time and had three missed calls, one from David Lee. I rang him back and he said ‘England have been trying to get in touch with you.’

“I think it was Brendon Galloway, who was at Everton at the time, who had dropped out so I got the call. I told Cloughy and how he didn’t get a call-up to the 18s or 21s, was beyond belief, the goals he was scoring.

“It was good to get looked at by England because the squad tends to get dominated by Premier League players, so to get called up at Bolton was unbelievable.

“I remember the standard in the first training session, how fast the passing was, Lew Baker at Chelsea, (James) Ward-Prowse, my team-mate now Callum Chambers, Jon Swift, (Ruben) Loftus-Cheek was just bullying players.

“It put me in good stead for the move to Arsenal.”

After his first taste of international football, Holding finally made his move to North London.

And to the surprise of many, he started the first three Premier League games against Liverpool, Leicester and Watford – going on to feature in six straight wins at the end of the campaign, culminating in the FA Cup final victory against Chelsea.

Life under the microscope at a top flight club has not been all sweetness and light for Holding, however, and with Arsenal’s inconsistent form in the latter years of Arsene Wenger and his successor, Unai Emery, there has been more criticism to contend with in the national media.

“I dealt with it better than my mum and dad, to be honest,” the defender said.

“I had a start, three games where I’d got a good reputation, people were surprised at how well I was doing. But then the adrenaline dropped and I didn’t perform quite as well and the scrutiny starts instantly.

“I just thought that if I can’t take the good with the bad then I am not going to take any at all.

“My mum and dad found it so hard not to read it up in Manchester.

“I just ended up telling them to ignore it, don’t click on it.

“You watch Match of the Day – as I have every weekend growing up – and all of a sudden you are being scrutinised on there and you think ‘when did this happen?’”

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Moving from the North West to the capital was also a culture shock initially for Holding, as an early night out with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain showed.

“We went to Nobu in Mayfair and obviously I am just a normal northern lad – and they were ordering a round of drinks,” he explained.

“I’m like ‘do they have cider?’ And they looked at me like, ‘what?’ “So I just said ‘I’ll have another one of whatever you’re having’.

“When the food came it was all raw fish. I’m not really a fish fan at the best of times, let alone raw.

“It was funny, the difference. They were like ‘God, you are northern!’ “Luckily, he took the bill, but I’m sure I’ve paid one since then.”

Listen to the whole Lion of Vienna Podcast with Rob Holding – along with much more on Arsenal, his England ambitions, his academy upbringing at Bolton and his days under Neil Lennon, right here.

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