Crimes against Bolton Wanderers

Coil and Gartside style....


Ngog £35,000 a week, Mears £25,000 a week.

Absolutely staggering   


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All posters on this forum should be made to read this article in full before they're allowed to post again.

Says it all.

Sticky please.

"Such is the inheritance of manager Dougie Freedman, who must be wondering what on earth he has walked into, having surrendered the sanctity of Crystal Palace, whom he had taken towards promotion. While the non-footballing sides of the club have been cut away – the director of communications Mark Alderton left last summer – Freedman has sought to meld together his own players, hired on austerity salaries, with those on anachronistic pay. He is one of the few managers who can feel blessed that six of his players are out of contract this summer. Freedman, who helped to establish the Palace youth system that produced Wilfried Zaha, Nathaniel Clyne and Johnny Williams, has revealed his disappointment with the youth system he has inherited."

The part of the article that makes me want to bang my head against the wall (and I'm assuming that it's true) is the wages of the new deals for Knight and Wheater 'after' relegation.   

Coyle has a lot to answer for. No wonder Whelan showed him the door so quickly.

This highlights the ridiculous decisions the club has made all being overseen by Gartside. High wages for mediocre players!

Megson’s £50m investment – bringing Gary Cahill to the Reebok when Aston Villa’s Martin O’Neill wasn’t much interested in him, as well as Lee Chung-yong, Mark Davies, Gretar Steinsson and Matt Taylor – has always been underrated.

This is a laughable statement. Cahill was a decent player but hardly a world-beater for us, and didn't actually net much profit. Lee, after a good start, has been poor, Mark Davies injured or anonymous, Steinsson was again average and Matt Taylor utter shit.

It's a fair article apart from the above - and while it was Coyle that signed the majority of these overpaid ponces Gartside has to take the blame for letting him do it.

absolutely criminal the wages we are paying to these players. What happened to the days of relegation clauses which meant their wages were cut? This used to happen when we first got promoted, did we get too confident and take out these clauses?

Also the wages agreed after we were relagated beggers belief!

Its a joke, utter joke, its Gartsides fault, he signed the cheque book, nobody else, just him.

at least we know that the wage bill for next season will be a lot smaller as surely this means that all the players out of contract this summer will go then. We simply can't afford to keep them on those wages.

Quite an interesting article. As a fan have I been responsible for the shit we are in for despising that ginger twat?
No, the fat controller picked him!! He's the top man!!!!!

Time to have a clear out at the top of people who can't do their job properly me thinks...

Copper Dragon wrote:The part of the article that makes me want to bang my head against the wall (and I'm assuming that it's true) is the wages of the new deals for Knight and Wheater 'after' relegation.   

Absolutely, but don't forget Mears on £25k a week. Mears is even worse than Knight. Was he any good at Burnley?

Makes you wonder what fantastic wage Pratley is on for four years.

Pratley reported at the time to be on £17k per week. dunno if this changed on relegation!

Interesting comment re. youth system.

It goes a long way to explaining the mess we're in, the monumental task Dougie is taking on and the grim picture it paints for the immediate future.

One good thing is that the wage bill will tumble in the summer and maybe then Dougie will be able to bring in a few players to steady the ship, but it would be a miracle if he can sign promotion-winning quality.

It's a sad indictment of previous managers and the current Chairman who is clearly anything but risk-averse. In a way, it's also a sad indictment of our club's reputation - that the players we've gambled on would only sign for us if we throw money at them.

So:
* Stuck with mercenary players who are on a fortune, but playing average at best for the most part
* Lack of quality in the youth system
* No budget to turn things round
* Dirty laundry washed in public

...nothing new then, but this article puts some facts behind what we've all been thinking.

xmiles wrote:Was he any good at Burnley?

He did well for Burnley, a decent attacking right back for us.

This article lays far too much blame at Coyle's feet and defends Megson (who I personally felt was the WORST manager we had in my lifetime) to the death with damn near no evidence to back it other than Meggo didn't take us down and Coyle did. In my opinion if Megson had remained at the helm we'd have gone down in 2010 not 2012. He had no idea how to use the players he signed and they looked as if they couldn't be bothered to play for him anymore. The reporter talks about the 'profits' made on sales of 'Megson' players which were a drop in the ocean compared to what they were paid in wages and the losses sustained by the likes of Elmander walking out for nothing after being misused by the clown who bought him for 8.2 million quid as an attacking midfielder but played him as a lone striker for two years. 

The report makes some very fair points but it's primary purpose seems to be an attempt to say "I told you so!" As he points out he was slated for defending Megson whose only failing (according to this dweeb) was to be unpopular. Perhaps what he should have done is looked at WHY smegsonius was disliked, perhaps by getting off his arse and watching us play like Accrington Stanley when he inherited a squad that had qualified for Europe twice in three seasons and secured four consecutive top eight finishes in the Premier League. 

I think this is mainly a reporter massaging his own ego despite the number of decent points he raised. The wages are shockingly high for some very mediocre players but I note he didn't mention Megson signed Paul Robinson for more than two million quid from West Brom or the way he carried on carping about being below derby and how good he was because football people had told him so. He makes no mention of the rampant ego and disgusting contempt with which he treated anything that might be different to his own opinion and that he branded his own club's fans as pathetic. Frankly this report would have been far better if it had even attempted to be balanced but while it raises much to be concerned about it's little more than a one man ego trip.

That story in the Independent doesn't tell me anything I didn't know anyway, apart from N'Gog, Mears & Eagles are on around 5K a week more than I thought they were(that's if the story is accurate) The rest of the story isn't a surprise anyway.

I think we all knew Megson and Coyle overspent badly on some mediocre talents, but if anything it says more about the game nowadays that these kind of players command those prices...

I don't believe for a minute we're unique in the kind of money we spent/spend on wages and fee's over that period and to this day.