No more Bolton Wanderers?
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WTF. What has this got to do with discussing anything related to LFC ? Or any PL team ? Or the CL ? etc. etc.
You can feel sympathy / empathise with their fans .. but that's it. There are plenty of clubs that have gone to the chopping block, they are far from the first and there's no way they'll be the last.
The scandalous neglect of Bury and Bolton Wanderers is nothing short of a national tragedy
[article]
As the visibly devastated supporters of Bury and Bolton Wanderers somehow face up to huge parts of their lives and communities being ripped away, the rest of the English game must now face up to the reality that its very fabric is being ripped apart.
This is a problem that goes way beyond those north-west communities, even though they are the ones currently feeling the pain, currently suffering the reality that social institutions that have been there for well over a century may just disappear.
This is now a very live issue for the game. It is also one that has long been coming.
Although it had been 27 years since the last time a professional club went bust, with Aldershot in 1992, the fact that two could effectively die at the same day emphasises this is no longer going to be a rare occurrence. It is likely to be the trend, eventually proving dismal predictions that 75% of lower-league clubs could go out of business over the next half-decade.
The hope is that a deal can still be done with Football Ventures to save Bolton but it currently looks bleak.
If that doesn’t happen, the technicalities would ensure that both Bury and Bolton go through two-week advisory periods to see if funds can be found to survive. In the words of one source, though, “it’s over once it reaches this stage”.
“The writing’s on the wall.”
But not just from today.
This would be nothing short of a national tragedy, because of what it reflects about 2019 British society, and because there were so many forewarnings.
There are admittedly wider forces involved – from changing societal demographics to young supporters consuming the game in a completely different way - but this situation should still provoke the most focused of questions.
Bolton’s joint-administrator Paul Appleton understandably said on Friday that “there seems little point in apportioning blame because that makes no difference to the staff, players, management, supporters and the community” but it may yet make a difference to the game. There is a lot of blame to go around.
Firstly, there are those questions about the owners – Ken Anderson and Steve Dale – but not just regarding their ruinous running of the clubs.
There’s also how those owners are even there in the first place: how did the game allow this?
With Bolton, how exactly did the EFL allow a man previously banned from serving as a company director – and who then paid himself £525,000 and his son £125,000 for “consultancy” – to buy the club?
Around the time of the purchase, figures in football finance told concerned members of the supporters’ trust that it was “a bad deal” and “a matter of time before it fell apart”.
That has proven depressingly true.
At Bury, eight months after Dale bought the club for £1, the EFL are still waiting for evidence he can meet the financial commitments that come with owning a League One club. There is instead a lot of evidence of a track record in selling the assets of struggling companies.
The EFL must start to properly look at its regulations for ownership, but the greater discussion for the game is that such concerns did not start with the current ownerships. Bolton and Bury are both among many clubs who have had their own specific issues, but all borne of the same collective problem.
They have both been stretched to breaking point by the huge wealth gaps in English football, that create this unsustainable upward drag, led by a set of elite clubs who may as well be operating in a different world.
It is certainly a world alien to what Bury have been operating in.
That Bolton were so recently in the Premier League, and were founding members of the Football League, only further layers the issue. Many feel the problems do go back to the expenditure of their time at the top. They have gone all the way to rock-bottom, in a bell-weather fable for the game.So soon after a period where they were signing outright international stars, they can barely get local buyers, but that is the case for Bury and many such clubs.
Hence the pointed question posed to the Independent by David Bick, the chairman of Square1 Consulting, who has been involved in lot of football finance.
“If you were starting a football league club now, would you put a club in Bolton?”
This is the greatest problem.
It just doesn’t make financial sense. It would be an illogical move, in a game that is seeing its very structure get altered.
“The smart business people have looked at it and think it’s not worth bothering with,” Ian Bridge, of the Bolton Wanderers Supporters Trust, recently told the Independent.
One source meanwhile says that many parties initially interested in bidding for Bolton thought the purchase would have included the Bolton Whites. That is the depressing reality, that buying the club was only valuable in a financial sense insofar as its assets could be sold, and the stadium perhaps demolished to build apartments.
Instead, should no deal be agreed, those assets will next be sold to pay off creditors as “the process of closing down the company” starts.
This would ultimately lead to the liquidation of the clubs, their expulsions from the EFL, the loss of hundreds of jobs and – more than anything – the loss of social institutions that have been there for over a century.
It may also, however, lead to something else. It says much about where football is that the worst-case scenario could actually be the best thing for these institutions’ identities, as it would allow supporters to reset and organically rebuild clubs that are solely owned by them; that many supporters of the biggest clubs would envy.
Back in 1992, Aldershot Town were formed out of the ashes of Aldershot. It took them 16 years to get back into the Football League.
This may well be the journey Bolton and Bury face. This is what they have to get their heads around, now that there is no football match to go to. A galling prospect, but maybe the only workable solution for community clubs against the hyper-globalisation of the top end of the game.
Right now, in one of those more ironic inevitabilities that the intangibles of football somehow conjure, Bolton and Bury are currently scheduled to meet in League One on Sunday 8 September at noon. The match is similarly set to be shown on Sky Sports. The same broadcaster on Tuesday temporarily had a countdown clock, for the 5pm deadline the EFL set the two clubs. Their situations were in-studio treated in the same excitable tones as transfer news; their potential deaths treated as entertainment.
The game being viewed as mere entertainment, rather than a distinctive part of English culture with inherent sociological values, is a distinctive part of this problem.
If that game doesn’t take place, we’ll all watch something else, move onto another things. The fans of Bolton and Bury can’t, though. The game, meanwhile, shouldn’t.
This is likely its immediate future: so many clubs consigned to the past.
x[/article]
[article]
As the visibly devastated supporters of Bury and Bolton Wanderers somehow face up to huge parts of their lives and communities being ripped away, the rest of the English game must now face up to the reality that its very fabric is being ripped apart.
This is a problem that goes way beyond those north-west communities, even though they are the ones currently feeling the pain, currently suffering the reality that social institutions that have been there for well over a century may just disappear.
This is now a very live issue for the game. It is also one that has long been coming.
Although it had been 27 years since the last time a professional club went bust, with Aldershot in 1992, the fact that two could effectively die at the same day emphasises this is no longer going to be a rare occurrence. It is likely to be the trend, eventually proving dismal predictions that 75% of lower-league clubs could go out of business over the next half-decade.
The hope is that a deal can still be done with Football Ventures to save Bolton but it currently looks bleak.
If that doesn’t happen, the technicalities would ensure that both Bury and Bolton go through two-week advisory periods to see if funds can be found to survive. In the words of one source, though, “it’s over once it reaches this stage”.
“The writing’s on the wall.”
But not just from today.
This would be nothing short of a national tragedy, because of what it reflects about 2019 British society, and because there were so many forewarnings.
There are admittedly wider forces involved – from changing societal demographics to young supporters consuming the game in a completely different way - but this situation should still provoke the most focused of questions.
Bolton’s joint-administrator Paul Appleton understandably said on Friday that “there seems little point in apportioning blame because that makes no difference to the staff, players, management, supporters and the community” but it may yet make a difference to the game. There is a lot of blame to go around.
Firstly, there are those questions about the owners – Ken Anderson and Steve Dale – but not just regarding their ruinous running of the clubs.
There’s also how those owners are even there in the first place: how did the game allow this?
With Bolton, how exactly did the EFL allow a man previously banned from serving as a company director – and who then paid himself £525,000 and his son £125,000 for “consultancy” – to buy the club?
Around the time of the purchase, figures in football finance told concerned members of the supporters’ trust that it was “a bad deal” and “a matter of time before it fell apart”.
That has proven depressingly true.
At Bury, eight months after Dale bought the club for £1, the EFL are still waiting for evidence he can meet the financial commitments that come with owning a League One club. There is instead a lot of evidence of a track record in selling the assets of struggling companies.
The EFL must start to properly look at its regulations for ownership, but the greater discussion for the game is that such concerns did not start with the current ownerships. Bolton and Bury are both among many clubs who have had their own specific issues, but all borne of the same collective problem.
They have both been stretched to breaking point by the huge wealth gaps in English football, that create this unsustainable upward drag, led by a set of elite clubs who may as well be operating in a different world.
It is certainly a world alien to what Bury have been operating in.
That Bolton were so recently in the Premier League, and were founding members of the Football League, only further layers the issue. Many feel the problems do go back to the expenditure of their time at the top. They have gone all the way to rock-bottom, in a bell-weather fable for the game.So soon after a period where they were signing outright international stars, they can barely get local buyers, but that is the case for Bury and many such clubs.
Hence the pointed question posed to the Independent by David Bick, the chairman of Square1 Consulting, who has been involved in lot of football finance.
“If you were starting a football league club now, would you put a club in Bolton?”
This is the greatest problem.
It just doesn’t make financial sense. It would be an illogical move, in a game that is seeing its very structure get altered.
“The smart business people have looked at it and think it’s not worth bothering with,” Ian Bridge, of the Bolton Wanderers Supporters Trust, recently told the Independent.
One source meanwhile says that many parties initially interested in bidding for Bolton thought the purchase would have included the Bolton Whites. That is the depressing reality, that buying the club was only valuable in a financial sense insofar as its assets could be sold, and the stadium perhaps demolished to build apartments.
Instead, should no deal be agreed, those assets will next be sold to pay off creditors as “the process of closing down the company” starts.
This would ultimately lead to the liquidation of the clubs, their expulsions from the EFL, the loss of hundreds of jobs and – more than anything – the loss of social institutions that have been there for over a century.
It may also, however, lead to something else. It says much about where football is that the worst-case scenario could actually be the best thing for these institutions’ identities, as it would allow supporters to reset and organically rebuild clubs that are solely owned by them; that many supporters of the biggest clubs would envy.
Back in 1992, Aldershot Town were formed out of the ashes of Aldershot. It took them 16 years to get back into the Football League.
This may well be the journey Bolton and Bury face. This is what they have to get their heads around, now that there is no football match to go to. A galling prospect, but maybe the only workable solution for community clubs against the hyper-globalisation of the top end of the game.
Right now, in one of those more ironic inevitabilities that the intangibles of football somehow conjure, Bolton and Bury are currently scheduled to meet in League One on Sunday 8 September at noon. The match is similarly set to be shown on Sky Sports. The same broadcaster on Tuesday temporarily had a countdown clock, for the 5pm deadline the EFL set the two clubs. Their situations were in-studio treated in the same excitable tones as transfer news; their potential deaths treated as entertainment.
The game being viewed as mere entertainment, rather than a distinctive part of English culture with inherent sociological values, is a distinctive part of this problem.
If that game doesn’t take place, we’ll all watch something else, move onto another things. The fans of Bolton and Bury can’t, though. The game, meanwhile, shouldn’t.
This is likely its immediate future: so many clubs consigned to the past.
x[/article]
Because Bolton are a football club and this is a football forum. You said there are worse things in the world, but that could apply that logic to any football related post here.
And ? What on earth has that got to do with your comment : "In that case what's the point in discussing football at all?" ? Just because it's a football forum doesn't mean I have to give a shit about Bolton or Bury or any other team no matter where they are from. It's up to me to decide what I give a shit about and what I don't.
It's a strange logic, because it lacks the very passion and attachment that are the roots that drive the game and why we follow it and invest so much time (and often, money) in it.
As for the sheer greed of the likes of Anderson, hopefully this highlights the need for some regulation, in simplistic terms some kind of board scoring, based on previous Directorial roles, experience, being financially proven, etc. The crossover has finally gone the wrong side of "business", where the old cliche of owners just being in it for the money has finally reached the stage where blatant leeches are in on the act. We can argue it happened with Leeds and then nearly with us, but we were both well supported and able to capitalise on the boom of top end football, these clubs are experiencing the combined pinch of the increasing top end financial gulf, general financial uncertainty due to current political climates and the lack of help from governing bodies who have their focus primarily on commerciality and where the big money is. It's disgraceful it's happened and kudos to the very few clubs and players who've dug deep to help these clubs out. I heard someone applauding a player (Mata) for donating 1% of his wage to grass roots recently, alone that's not enough, but if more players did then we'd have some kind of level of support in place. The FA should have some kind of support fund in place with an obligatory contribution from clubs with a particular turnover.
You're sounding like an impassionate dick, I'm really surprised you don't get it.
Yeah but you have to expect people to think that's an odd statement for a club that has such a clear identity like ours - and knowing how close we were to fucking up
Mark. It's not that exactly. I get it, it's to an extent it's a community's identity. But that's what coal mining was to towns that depended on it. What say Vauxhall is to Ellesmere Port or Ford to Halewood, except they are far more important.
However of course BWFC isn't a major employer and if it's not a lean, mean business entity then today it's going to go away. The first of many of clubs if they don't learn quickly how to restructure. Maybe it will be an important lesson to the rest of the EFL. Despite the historical significance of a club like Bolton what it isn't is life or death. We are living in football's golden age as far as global reach is concerned but 100 years from now it's likely the whole sport will be marginal anyway and in 200 years gone (as will be the human race but even if it wasn't).
Oh dear. Again.
Its awful news and should be a wake up call to the league about ownership and also wage contribution in regards to turnover.
Far to many clubs live dangerously close to the limit or are knowingly in the red.
Its just not sustainable.
I feel for the fans, players, staff and the communities when you see the clubs just getting «switched off».
Its an insane footballing World we live in when some clubs barely can survive on one hand, and then you have the Scudamore 250k windfall story on the other one.
Far to many clubs live dangerously close to the limit or are knowingly in the red.
Its just not sustainable.
I feel for the fans, players, staff and the communities when you see the clubs just getting «switched off».
Its an insane footballing World we live in when some clubs barely can survive on one hand, and then you have the Scudamore 250k windfall story on the other one.
If they started the football league now do you think they'd have 92 clubs on this tiny island? My kids can't be arsed going to the match most of the time because they've got a million other things to do, and that's at the European champions. This is more about societal change I think. If you've got half a brain and you're born in Bolton or Bury you leave when you're 18 and pop back at Christmas for an awkward dinner. It's pretty complex but I reckon these clubs are a relic of our manufacturing boom, and the only surprise is that it's taken so long for them to start to die off.
WTF. So all the time and money I spent on football and you can tell me it is gone in 200 years. For how long have you known this and kept it to yourself? You have been on here posting and pretending it is cool and all the time you sat on this info you selffish prick..... what should i spend my time on now?
I'll go fishing for a while while figuring it out.
I'll go fishing for a while while figuring it out.
Fish are all radioactive
Well someone gets it at least. A real opinion instead of an 'oh dear'.
Haha. I guess I just don't rate the human race and am sure that we've already fucked this world up beyond redemption. Whether it was all us or mostly just a cycle (unlikely it wasn't due), the 6th extinction will soon be upon us 😉
This is also true.
I suppose the reason why they stayed afloat for so long was the injection of money from tv revenues. Has there been any other industry to receive any, er, surprise boost of cash?
In the 1900s? That was only a century ago, not long in terms the history of mankind!
😛
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