Mark Davies and / or Lee to be sold in the summer? - little money for transfer fees.

Grim reading -

WANDERERS were this morning counting the considerable cost of relegation from the Premier League.

Yesterday’s heartbreaking 2-2 draw at Stoke City spelled the end of an 11-year unbroken stint in the top flight – their longest since the Sixties – which will mean a loss of at least £30million in television money and sponsorship in the first season alone.

The club insist they are in no danger of heading down the same slippery exit road as Portsmouth, Leeds United or Bradford City and into serious financial peril, thanks largely to the fact Eddie Davies – through his company Moonshift Investments Ltd – has indicated he will continue to bankroll debts.

It has emerged that the 65-year-old Farnworth-born, Isle of Man businessman ploughed £10m of his personal fortune into the coffers in March as part of transfer costs.

On the positive side, the club owns its own stadium, hotel, training ground, car parks and academy and owe only around £10m of the £110m debt recorded in the last financial figures to the banks, again underwritten by the owner.

But while Davies’s investment gives the Whites a semblance of stability, it is highly likely to be a summer of austerity for Owen Coyle, who The Bolton News understands will remain in charge at the start of next season, despite failing to keep his team in the Premiership.

It appears that funds for new signings will be extremely limited, raising the prospect that key assets such as Mark Davies or Chung-Yong Lee could be sold.

Chairman Phil Gartside stated in March the club had already safeguarded as best as possible against relegation, with clauses inserted into the contracts of a handful last season’s new signings that reduce their wages in the second tier.

The retained list will be announced at the end of the week, and should confirm the release of several first-team players, with loan signings Ryo Miyaichi, Tuncay and Dedryck Boyata returning to their parent clubs The Whites’ emphasis will be on keeping a solid infrastructure at the club in a bid to return to the Premier League at the first attempt.

They will receive £19m from the Premier League this season by way of a parachute payment, which will decrease to £14m and two payments of £8m over the next three years.

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thought this would happen, hell I bet even the ball boys and the tea lady would be sold if gartside found a buyer.

he cant promise us that the club are going to do all they can to get us back up at the first attempt meanwhile trying to sell everyone and everybody to any tom dick and harry who will have them...

the man is full of shit and coyle is his lapdog who is just, well...shit.

im still angry...sorry :/

Marc Illes is just stating the obvious though, we have always had to sell players to make funds, dropping down a league isn't going to change that.

Like any club dropping from the prem there will always be other teams looking at our players to see if they can get a bargain.

It makes me laugh that people keep claiming Mark Davies is an asset - who the fuck is going to pay good money for him? Useless.

We are immediately going to be £30 million short of what we had this season - plus it looks as though Eddie Davies had to put in another £10 million of his own money just to keep us going.

We are going to need bodies next year to form a squad - so even if we sign players who have seen out their contracts like Kevin Davies will - we will I imagine still have to pay them a 'signing on fee' or they could simply go and play somewhere else who would pay them more.

Same goes for any outside the club 'free' signing we make.

Reading between the lines we don't seem to have much if any spare cash to do that - and obviously if we want to actually 'buy' someone, we won't have any money to do that unless we sell someone first - but who would want any of our players other than Mavies (Holden and Lee being out a year injured probably won't command a decent fee?) Reo-Coker or Sordell!

Wouldn't it be funny if our most coveted asset to sell turns out to be the player Coyle refused to play!

It also looks as though we are sticking with Coyle - but is there anyone confident about his skills in the transfer market - Blake, Gardner resigned, Sordell never played, Ngog dropped for our biggest match, etc?

God knows what clowns we might end up with!

How can Bolton claim to be pennyless, they had £8m of striking "talent" on the bench!

I'm confident about Coyle's skills in the transfer market.

I don't see anywhere in Iles' article where it suggests Eddie Davies "bailed us out" or "kept us going" either. The article explicitly states the money was for transfer costs, not wages, operating costs or creditors.

I accept that Coyle, Gartside and many of the players are fair game for criticism following relegation. I don't accept some of the scare mongering that goes on though. People talking about us going bust or dropping down the divisions. Totally unfounded.

largehat wrote:I don't see anywhere in Iles' article where it suggests Eddie Davies "bailed us out" or "kept us going" either. The article explicitly states the money was for transfer costs, not wages, operating costs or creditors.

He put the money in for the transfers in MARCH - which of course is outside the transfer window.

Therefore the money must have been needed to pay a debt falling due.

If he had to put in his own money it showed that the club did not have sufficient cash-flow to pay our creditor/s at the time.

Therefore he personally bailed us out / kept us going (or however you would like to express it).

QED

Hmm, fair enough, I see what you're saying, perhaps it's more open interpretation than I first thought. I just don't like the term 'bail out' because it suggests we're on the brink of ruin.

Natasha Whittam wrote:It makes me laugh that people keep claiming Mark Davies is an asset - who the fuck is going to pay good money for him? Useless.

Never mind the fact you don't rate Mark Davies, Natasha.

Now we have gone down, Stuart Holden has until the end of the transfer window in September to leave on a free transfer/terminate his contract, or you've proven once again that you're completely and utterly full of shit, and will write anything on these forums to troll and get a reaction.

You do remember making up a load of crap about this being in his contract and that you had seen it, don't you?

Well, now you have a chance to silence me on something and prove me wrong. No doubt your response will be some pathetic excuse when this does not happen.

Bolton Hater wrote:How can Bolton claim to be pennyless, they had £8m of striking "talent" on the bench!

You're right, possum.

largehat wrote:Hmm, fair enough, I see what you're saying, perhaps it's more open interpretation than I first thought. I just don't like the term 'bail out' because it suggests we're on the brink of ruin.

I doubt that we are anywhere near the brink of ruin at all.

The bulk of the debt is owed to one man - the clubs owner Eddie Davies.

He is almost certainly running the club as a business (to make a return on his investment) as opposed to say City or Chelsea where the operational costs for their owners are just small change to them.

The money invested is not necessarily all Davies though - it comes from one of his other businesses 'Moonshift' (I think it is called) and I think I'm right in saying that he is the 'lead' investor that have 'lent' to Moonshift (and hence on to the club). Moonshift is based in the tax haven of Bermuda and as far as I understand the Bank of Bermuda as links to Moonshift (I think they help run it - or something like that).

So, as far as the club is concerned as long as the person who is by far the major creditor (Eddie Davies) is 'financially' happy, then it doesn't much matter what debt the club runs up (as long as we keep the taxman and any banks who have lent directly to us happy!)

Of course Mr Davies (and/or those who have invested with him in the club) will want a return on their money invested - and up to now they have been taking a nice profit on 'arrangement fees' (for the loans) and interest repayments.

It may even be by now match or even exceeds the capital by them investment in the club by them - so in a sense Eddie /they have already made their money back. (This is just my guess though - so don't take this as fact).

Even if Eddie/they have received their 'stake money' back, Eddie/they still own equity in the club and thus still want to receive their 'interest payments' for the considerable future - thus it will not be in his/their interest to see the club financially fail.

Obviously as the cash flow is less, the ability to service the debt (pay the interest on it) is that much less too - so the club must reduce its costs in the Championship, if Eddie / they still want a high yield on their investment.

The only fly in the ointment that I can see is if / when the people who have put their money in - wants it back and I can't see that happening if we can continue to service the debt.

As long as the Bank of Bermuda is behind Mr Davies, I don't think we have a problem.

The reason why Eddie put his hand in his pocket for the £10 million was because of cash-flow at the time - which is not necessarily the same as not having the money. It's more akin to we have the money and have budgeted to pay you but we just don't have it on us right now - probably we were awaiting a periodic lump sum payment from Sky and Eddie helped us out (for a price of course!) until the Sky money was due.

That's how I see our finical position anyway.

I honestly do not know where all this shit has come from.Most of our players are contracted and not on mega wages.N,Gog,Sordell will be here next season.We have 10 players out of contract.Zat Shyte etc.If we are considering giving Kd a new contract we cant be in that bad a position.We will not sell chung yong lee,regardless as he has been injured all season.Holden is staying.We have just acquired greg Wylde from Rangers.Vela and Riley have come through the academy.We have a young team and where all the doom and despondancy has come from i do not know.The owner is a fan we own our own ground with a hotel on it.The only player that may be of interest to other teams is Mark Davies.By Friday we will know who is going and who is staying.Thats from the players out of contract.Going in to the Championship isnt the end of the world.It could be a blessing in disguise get the young lads used to winning and come back stronger with a winning mentality.Newcastle went down came back up stabalised and had a great season this year.I know the cries of they get 50-000 fans yes they do but all three off the relegated teams were in the play offs to get back in the premier.We have done it before in the 90's we were considered a yo -yo team.The fair weather fans will not be renewing there tickets but will be back once we top the Championship.Get Behind your team and get to Bolton Central and renew your season tickets if you have not already done so.BWFC back in the premiership 2013.We need a centre half and its like we have 4 new signings with chungy ,sordell,holden,wylde.

Forgive my limited understanding of the finer points of our financial situation, but I thought that the players whose contract has now ended were either on top dollar (Zat Knight, Jussi, Petrov) or not playing anyway (Sean Davis, Paul Robinson, Bibi, Robbie Blake) and even getting shut of Klasnic, Knight, Petrov, Robinson, Bibi, Davis and Blake frees up enough money for approximately 10 new squad players - and I think we all know OC won't be buying 10 new squad members. It's not all peaches and cream, obviously - but it's not all doom and gloom either.

It frees up the wages certainly.

However we need to recruit a certain number of bodies for our squad - don't forget we will be playing more matches next season.

Obviously their wages will be covered from the freed up wages BUT what if anything needs to be paid to induce the new players to sign for other rather than someone else - a signing on fee if you like.

Maybe little if anything but I suspect we will still try to go for the 'better' type of players at our new level - and they of course will have more choices of clubs to go to than just us.

Our salary budget will obviously be less than what the current 'out of contract' Premier players were on - now that we have to budget for the Championship.

As long as we can 'pay' for the signing on fees and salaries within the lower budget we have no problem but if we need capital for the signing on fees / buying a player from another club - then it looks like we would then have to sell a player or two in order to achieve that.

Can we sell Coyle?

Who'd have him?

Good point.

Natasha Whittam wrote:It makes me laugh that people keep claiming Mark Davies is an asset - who the fuck is going to pay good money for him? Useless.

that'll be Mark davies who has been voted player of the year at the awards night!!!! Clueless!!!

Everybody panic!
There's a lot of dead wood to clear out. Just need to make damned sure we keep the young 'uns and sort out the defence and we'll be fine.
Anyway, it could be worse....
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