OFFICIAL - Bolton up for sale for £25 million

BoltonTillIDie wrote:I don’t understand, I have never accused him of doing anything illegal.  I’ve said he ran the club poorly, which he has.  Fact. 

Holdsworth also is not the messiah also, he’s a very naughty boy.  

My opinion is based on facts too.

Your opinion is massively oversimplified.

For example the club lost vastly more money under Eddie Davies (he had to write off £200m) he didn't do anything illegal either.

If we simply judged on your criteria as you've  - although we went on to have players such as Okocha and Anelka and played in Europe twice, Eddie Davies ran the club disastrously (let alone poorly) - which he did. Fact.

Gartside may have been his 'naughty boy'.

This opinion is based on facts too.


Can't you see you need to look deeper than just the headline to begin to understand the bigger picture?

If Anderson had chucked in £200m of his own money into the club you and everyone else would think he was a marvellous owner wouldn't you?  Just like Eddie is generally seen as.

The only difference between your opinion of Anderson now and your opinion if he had put in a chunk of his personal wealth would be something not directly related to running a company.  

Companies run on the difference between how much they spend and how much they bring in - not how much the owner puts in of his own money.

Big fat fact with a cherry on the top.

I can't wait for the moment when Kenocchio is exposed as the crook he is and Sluffy has to admit he's wrong. Bet it won't be one of his extra long posts though 

See, there's a silver lining in every cloud 

Norpig wrote:I can't wait for the moment when Kenocchio is exposed as the crook he is and Sluffy has to admit he's wrong. Bet it won't be one of his extra long posts though 

People don't want to get it but running a company that makes a loss year, after year after year will go bust as soon as you stop propping it up from outside funds.

That doesn't mean the owner (in this case Anderson) was a crook, or even that he run the business badly.

I bet 99% of people who do think Anderson is a crook and/or a bad businessman have never been near to running a company in their lives.

Simple as that really.

The golden boy of the ST in recent weeks had his solicitors business closed down, was suspended as a solicitor by his own professional body and was more or less branded by them as not being trustworthy with other peoples money.

If Anderson is found to be remotely as bad as that whilst owning the club I'd be amazed!

There's been TEN accountants going through the books at the club under the Administrator - if he's been up to no good we will soon know - but I doubt he has, he's just played the system  - think more like tax avoidance being perfectly legal (though may be morally wrong to many) whilst tax evasion is totally illegal.

Sluffy wrote:

Norpig wrote:I can't wait for the moment when Kenocchio is exposed as the crook he is and Sluffy has to admit he's wrong. Bet it won't be one of his extra long posts though 

People don't want to get it but running a company that makes a loss year, after year after year will go bust as soon as you stop propping it up from outside funds.

So what you are saying is that it was impossible from day one for Ken to  stop the club going into administration

In which case it was a complete waste of everybody's time in Ken putting himself forward as the owner.

Growler wrote:

Sluffy wrote:

Norpig wrote:I can't wait for the moment when Kenocchio is exposed as the crook he is and Sluffy has to admit he's wrong. Bet it won't be one of his extra long posts though 

People don't want to get it but running a company that makes a loss year, after year after year will go bust as soon as you stop propping it up from outside funds.

So what you are saying is that it was impossible from day one for Ken to  stop the club going into administration

In which case it was a complete waste of everybody's time in Ken putting himself forward as the owner.

The deal as reported at the time was that Holdsworth was going to put £5m into the club to keep in solvent (for about a year)- in order that action could be taken to cut costs, turn it around a quickly sell it on to someone with bigger pockets.

Holdsworth didn't put £5m into the club - in fact he increased it's debt by £5m instead (plus ended up taking around £1m for himself out of it).

Because of that which happened right from the very beginning, what's difficult to understand why Anderson ended up staying on a lot longer than he ever planned to do and Eddie Davies returning to financially prop the club up on the quiet?

If Eddie had not died then no doubt the bills would still have been paid and we wouldn't be in Admin.

But he did and we are.

Not Anderson's fault if he chose not to piss his millions away like Eddie had.

The inevitable simple had to happen, which it did.

Not rocket science really.

Anderson CHOSE not to pay his employees, some of which are on minimum wage and relying on handouts. We have entered administration and will start next season on ATLEAST -12 points in a lower league. The proud name of BWFC has been dragged through the dirt for Andersons entire reign, the man is a crook, scumbag and the worst owner in the history of Bolton Wanderers. 

Sluffy you just look like a buffoon trying to defend him, but I’m sure you’ll carry on

Boggers you say he chose not to pay players but how do you know that? Isn't it possible the money simply wasn't in the club's accounts? For one thing (and something Ken mentioned at the very beginning of his tenure) there is a huge differential and delay between when things like TV and sponsorship money comes in compared to things like player contracts etc. As I understand it most contracts run until June 30th (at which time things like performance bonuses, appearance bonuses and the like become due) but TV money doesn't come in until late August early September.

As to the staff needing handouts my heart truly does bleed for them but the fact is businesses go bust every day including some huge names. Just look what happened to the likes of Woolworths and C&A. Everybody moaned and said it was a shame but the fact is the world is changing and so is the marketplace. I have said for many years that football is merely a form of entertainment and an extremely expensive one at that when compared to how else you could spend two hours.

Many fans no longer see the point in spending all that money and taking out all the additional time for travel etc to spend two hours sat on a plastic seat in the rain when they could watch the very same thing from a comfortable chair in their own home for a fraction of the cost.

Bolton Wanderers are only the latest casualties of this shift and frankly it's a wonder it's taken so long to happen. The truth is there are too many clubs in the North West to begin with and when you throw in the presence of both Manchester teams and both Merseyside teams it's obvious that most fans who do want to actually watch a match at a stadium are going to give their alleigance to the 'big' clubs.

Whether you like it or not the fact is BWFC has no divine right to even survive much less prosper. And in this day and age there are far too many similar sized clubs facing the same set of problems. Even massive clubs aren't immune to this, look what happened to Glasgow Rangers, they actually went out of existence and the club that bears that name now is NOT the one that won all those trophies and honours.

In England we've seen Leeds Utd in admin twice, Portsmouth in all kinds of trouble within a couple of years of winning the FA Cup and Aldershot going out of existence halfway through a season. You can't blame Ken for the changing tastes of the public.

Some of the things he has done are distasteful and morally questionable but unless someone shows me proof he's done something illegal I'm going to operate on the principle he's innocent (legally) and his 'crime' as you put it seems to be he chose not to bankrupt himself personally by chucking his own money at a dead horse.

Boggersbelief wrote:Anderson CHOSE not to pay his employees, some of which are on minimum wage and relying on handouts. We have entered administration and will start next season on ATLEAST -12 points in a lower league. The proud name of BWFC has been dragged through the dirt for Andersons entire reign, the man is a crook, scumbag and the worst owner in the history of Bolton Wanderers. 

Sluffy you just look like a buffoon trying to defend him, but I’m sure you’ll carry on

Yet again someone completely fails to grasp that it was BWFC and NOT Anderson which had the legal responsibility to pay the players from trading solvently.

When the club could no longer to trade whist solvent it had to call in the Administrators to protect the creditors of the company and thus trigger the EFL's 12 point penalty.

It is as black and white as that no matter what anyone may think or believe to the contrary.

It really isn't hard to understand.

LPP, I know he chose not to pay the players because he said so himself. Something along the lines of “I’m not putting any more money into the club because the fans don’t like me” the pathetic dweeb.

Sluffy the Buffoon..KA was the sole owner, of course it was his responsibility to fund the club. He’s a scumbag that has run bwfc into the ground.

I think some people suspect that KA syphoned funds from BWFC to his private accounts and that is why there were not sufficient funds to pay staff and players for the full season.

This assumption was made because of his past business  track record plus his general attitude towards  the club.

These views are not based on proof of any kind, just feelings.

No doubt time will tell us the full story, or not!

The guy took out more than half a mill per year for him and his son. Tell me exactly what they’ve done to warrant a salary like that?

I think i've figured out why Sluffy keeps backing KA, it's nothing more than keeping the post count up.

Boggersbelief wrote:LPP, I know he chose not to pay the players because he said so himself. Something along the lines of “I’m not putting any more money into the club because the fans don’t like me” the pathetic dweeb.

Sluffy the Buffoon..KA was the sole owner, of course it was his responsibility to fund the club. He’s a scumbag that has run bwfc into the ground.

Boggers, KA was NEVER the sole owner of the club. It was and remains a limited company. That means there must, by law be at least 3 shareholders. A sole tradership is an entirely different legal entity. In point of fact Ken was the majority shareholder but that doesn't make him personally liable for the club's debts.

Sluffy has pointed out to you many times that Ken Anderson is not and never was Bolton Wanderers Football Club and is not and never was obliged to pay any of its bills from his own personal pocket. His personal liability just like that of the other shareholders is limited to whatever he initially agreed to put into the business, something he did when he bought us and exceeded when he bought out DH and Sportshield. From that point on he'd met his legal obligations to BWFC and was entitled to keep the rest of his money in his pocket.

You mention when he said he wasn't putting any more money into the club because the fans wanted him out. Do you seriously blame him for that? If I was chairman of a club where the fans were calling me a criminal and scum and posting various threats on the internet I'm certain I wouldn't put one penny of my own personal money into it and why should I?

I'm not saying Ken is a saint by any means but you cannot keep saying he's obliged to pay for the club when he isn't. You cannot keep calling him a criminal without proof he's actually broken laws and you can't claim he should have bankrupted himself just because other people think he should.

I love Bolton Wanderers and have for more than forty years but there is no way in Hell I'd risk my own or my family's financial future to keep it afloat. At the end of the day it's a business and when businesses make losses, especially on the scale BWFC has only an idiot would keep throwing their own personal money in there. Whatever else may be said about KA he's not an idiot and he's already done what was legally required of him if not more. None of us have any right to expect anything more from him.

Boggersbelief wrote:The guy took out more than half a mill per year for him and his son. Tell me exactly what they’ve done to warrant a salary like that?

Boggers, Gartside was on far more than that to be chairman of BWFC and frankly half a mil a year isn't that large a salary for the chairman of a company that size. And remember he didn't legally pay himself anything. BWFC or its parent company paid him as an employee. Sure, it's a lot of money to people on minimum or even the national average wage but nothing compared to what some chairmen of similar sized commercial enterprises are on. It looks bad in the press of course but I suspect some of the more rabid 'anti-Anderson' brigade would froth at the mouth if he'd been paid a tenner a year.

I haven't seen the latest accounts with regards to Lee Anderson but I understand he was paid as an agent rather than as a direct employee. If so it smacks of conflict of interest but I reiterate that since no laws appear to have been broken we can't claim it was criminal. Morally questionable perhaps, but legally acceptable. Do I like that? No of course not but the fact is there are far more dodgy arrangements at other clubs. One only need look at Man Utd in Sir Alex Ferguson's time. I believe his son was being paid by multiple parties as an agent and consultant, often for the same negotiations but no one called him on it.

In truth KA was on a hiding to nothing from the moment he came in and the fiasco with DH only made it worse. There isn't a way to hide one other glaring reality. Our problems started long before Ken Anderson arrived and frankly some of us had been warning for years that the piper would eventually have to be paid. When ED decided to pull the plug the writing was already on the wall and all Ken did was delay the inevitable. He didn't run the club into the ground, it was already there. At worst he failed to lift us back off it.

No wonder people don't post on here anymore. People don't want to read 500+ word responses that say exactly the same thing that has been posted 500 times before. This site used to be fun now it's just pure tedium.

DEANO82 wrote:No wonder people don't post on here anymore. People don't want to read 500+ word responses that say exactly the same thing that has been posted 500 times before. This site used to be fun now it's just pure tedium.

DEANO82 wrote:No wonder people don't post on here anymore. People don't want to read 500+ word responses that say exactly the same thing that has been posted 500 times before. This site used to be fun now it's just pure tedium.

 Agreed, can they not post some happy memories of following the club in the 70s or something.

Must admit, I do tend to leave out the longer posts.