Bolton Wanderers have avoided transfer window headache as Ricardo Santos statement made

Deals spanning multiple years for footballers become rarer and less common outside the Premier League and the further down the football pyramid one looks.

But Bolton Wanderers have been keen to do so in recent seasons to tie down key assets to the club and give Ian Evatt a core of players he can call upon to build success at the University of Bolton Stadium. Three year deals and beyond have been handed out in the past and illustrates their importance.

Dapo Afolayan, Declan John and George Johnston were among those to be handed out deals of that length last summer. Dion Charles and Aaron Morley were handed contracts of three-and-a-half years in January.

READ MORE: 'Didn't want to go anywhere else' - Ricardo Santos' first words after new Bolton Wanderers contract

Wanderers captain Ricardo Santos has joined the likes of Charles, Morley and new team mate Jack Iredale in putting pen to paper on a deal lasting until the summer of 2025. The defender's previous contract ran until mid-2023.

Santos' importance at Wanderers cannot be understated. He played every single game of the club's automatic promotion campaign out of League Two.

Were it not for injuries and suspensions, it is not hard to imagine that he would have managed the same feat in the 2021/22 campaign. He has played a total of 91 times for Wanderers in all competitions since signing for the club in the summer of 2020.

Clearly, Wanderers did not get their recruitment 100 per cent spot in during Evatt's first summer in charge of the club if one looks at the squad now compared to the start of the 2020/21 season. That's life, of course - no manager gets every single signing right.

But from that summer's business, the signing of Gethin Jones and Santos in particular