When your father was a Premier League player for almost a century, your parent club West Brom’s manager is picking you to start at center half for them soon, and you are thrown into a League One promotion battle at Bolton, it’s sink or swim.
Thankfully, the big 21-year-old is skilled in a variety of sports, including swimming.
The kid defender seemed to have everything going for him, standing far over his stated 6 feet 2 inches on Wikipedia and even taller than the 6 feet 4 inches his father Martin played at when he was a player for Birmingham City and Blackburn Rovers.
After a successful season on loan at Cheltenham Town, Taylor was already accustomed to this level of play. During the January transfer window, Bolton needed an aerially powerful defender to anchor their back three in lieu of captain Ricardo Santos. Taylor responded to their call.
Just one week prior to the loan transfer to Lancashire, he had been thrown into the thick of an FA Cup Black Country derby, a tense match that was postponed for thirty-five minutes due to crowd unrest between the opposing fan bases.
In the final days of the window, a mad rush to sign him emerged, raising the stakes even higher for his future professional move. Fortunately, Taylor doesn’t have to travel far to find guidance on the football side of things if they become too much for him.
It’s odd since my dad doesn’t put any pressure on me; he’s such a laid back guy. What happens happens, and he is always chill,” he said to The Bolton News.
“You have a long way to go, your dad has played in the Premier League,” says my mother in the comments every time.He had a fantastic career, and as I continue to play and advance in the game, I’m becoming more and more aware of how much
“I didn’t really realize how good he was when I was younger, but now that I’m trying to prove myself, I can see it—he accomplished a lot.”My parents encourage me not to be startled by anything in football, and we do spend hours discussing his experiences in the game.
“It was a matter of ‘are you going there, are you going here?’ even during the transfer window. Though it was constantly changing, they only assisted in maintaining order.
“It was quite worrying, to be honest, but my main concern was not getting out on loan. I could have possibly had four or five months without playing many games at West Brom, and that was the main thing. When I knew Bolton were in, I knew I was definitely coming here.” Ironically nicknamed “Tiny” in his playing days, Martin Taylor was a hulking center-half who began his career at Ewood Park in the late nineties and played 124 times for Rovers, scoring six goals. Prior to starting another top-flight stint with Birmingham City, he went on to play for Rovers.
He was really slender in his early career, just like I am now. We are fairly similar in that regard because as he grew older, he gained weight and became a larger, more physically fit center half.”
Although Taylor’s ancestry may have included football, as a child he had the option of specializing in any number of sports, including cricket, basketball, tennis, and swimming. He was signed by West Brom at the age of ten, and in August 2021, he made his debut for the Baggies against Arsenal, playing alongside players such Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Martin Odegaard, and Bukayo Saka in a League Cup match that the Gunners won 6-0.
However, he made his league debut by the conclusion of that season, coming off
