Fear and ill-feeling running deep over Bolton’s startling decline
Ken Anderson’s stewardship of stricken club has riled players, press and fans
Modern-day footballers are often accused of being spoilt, but that could not be levelled at the players of Bolton Wanderers. Travelling to south-east London last month for a Championship match with Millwall, many stood for the majority of a packed train journey as no seats had been reserved in second class. Hardly ideal preparation.
These are the same players who, for a good while, would rush for the showers after training at their Lostock base in the knowledge that the hot water seldom lasted for much more than five minutes.
They might have a slightly easier time stomaching such inconveniences if there were not bigger problems engulfing the club, but after a summer in which the squad boycotted a pre-season friendly against St Mirren in protest at unpaid bonuses, Bolton’s financial woes are again in sharp focus after a trying past fortnight.
It was only on Friday, a full two weeks late, that players and coaching staff received their wages for November, the latest episode in the grim decline of a club who have flirted with administration and a succession of winding-up orders over the past 2½ years and for whom the heady days of four successive top-eight finishes in the Premier League under Sam Allardyce must, at times, feel like a figment of the imagination. Vibrancy has given way to apathy, excitement to anger and apprehension. Another nadir was reached last week when the club banned Marc Iles, chief football writer of The Bolton News, after chairman and owner Ken Anderson took exception to what was described as the “negative” tone and apparent inaccuracies in some of his reporting. The tipping point for Anderson was Iles accompanying the news of the November wages payment on Twitter with a GIF from The Muppet Christmas Carol, but many fans have sided with the journalist. A former football agent, Anderson was disqualified as a company director from 2005 until 2013 for transgressions, including diverting company funds into personal accounts and VAT discrepancies. Since that disqualification was not active at the time he was buying Bolton with the club’s former striker Dean Holdsworth in 2016, he passed the Football League’s owners and directors test. Asked by this observer over the weekend why he felt he was a fit and proper person to run a football club, Anderson said he had “nothing further to say on my ban” but added that it was “in respect of a company I was involved in 20 years ago”.
He has his supporters, who believe he has done a decent job in difficult circumstances, rationalising the club’s meagre finances, cutting costs and increasing off-field revenues, but also plenty of critics and is unlikely to be on many Christmas card lists, not that he was ever there to win a popularity contest.
What sits a little uncomfortably, though, is that on Sept 10, Anderson confirmed the club were heading for administration, even though it later transpired he had received a £5 million bridging loan from the late former owner, Eddie Davies, three days earlier to settle an overdue debt with Blumarble, an Essex-based finance firm. Why not communicate that publicly to fans at the time? Why the brinkmanship?
It was not until Iles reported the news on Sept 20 that it became known to the public. The loan to Davies’ trustees is due in February.
Cold showers and uncomfortable train journeys are the least of the players’ worries
How Anderson plans to repay it remains to be seen.
Bolton have won one of 16 Championship matches since that last brush with administration and are second bottom after Saturday’s 1-0 defeat to Leeds. Having worked wonders to keep Bolton up on the final day last season – a bonus payment for which he had still to receive as of last week – manager Phil Parkinson has a huge battle to repeat that this term. He has one of the Championship’s lowest budgets and a team made up predominantly of free transfers and loan signings. The Leeds goal came courtesy of a £7 million signing, Patrick Bamford. Bolton have bought two players for cash in three years – and those for a combined fee of less than £500,000. Cold showers and uncomfortable train journeys are, in truth, the least of their worries.