BOLTON MAY GET £15m ESCAPE

BOLTON WANDERERS chairman Ken Anderson claims it is unlikely that the £15m loan left by previous owner Eddie Davies will have to be paid back.

The club are estimated to be in £30m of debt, though Anderson – bidding to become the Trotters’ sole owner – insists that’s far from the truth.

And with £171m of Davies’ original £186m loan already written off, Anderson – who is in close contact with the former owner – feels the rest will follow suit, although the club’s high wage bill means tough decisions need to be made.

“It has been widely said to be £30m but that is not the case,” he said. “That includes Eddie Davies’ loan, which is not repayable at this moment. He has extended it and the circumstances are that it is unlikely we’ll have to repay it.

“We’ve got to the stage where come the summer we have worked out how this club can be sustainable.

“The biggest problem is high-cost players.

“Twenty players went last summer and by the end of this season we can really get this club back to some degree of sustainability.”

Anderson and director Dean Holdsworth led the Sports Shield consortium that bought Wanderers in March, and now need to strike a deal to avoid administration.

Anderson feels Bolton’s heady days of the Premier League will continue to become a distant memory.

He continued: “In the past we had Ed, and from what I can see he was putting in an average of between £15-18m a year into the club.

“The downside of that is that if that benefactor withdraws you end up where we were last March.”