Bolton Wanderers & Bury thread

[Ingram85]

Well, looks like Bolton will be no more. Potential new buyers seem to have backed out of the the deal leaving the club ****.

Feel for the fans and staff. A real shame. Shows how devestating the absolute monopoly of the football elite cripples everything downhill from them. As stated above, this is about more than just dodgy owners.

[useless]

Hopefully they can still be saved somehow, doesn't feel right a club like Bolton disappearing. I don't know the ins and outs of what's gone on there, but either way it's not the fans fault, just like it wasn't Villa fans' fault that we nearly went out of business under the guidance of Xia and Wyness.

[MaVilla]

i saw an article somewhere a while back talking about how any new owners (or current owners), should be expected to put up front an amount of money in something like a bond, the amount would be based on the costs to run the club for 3, 6 or 12 months or whatever?

The money put in the bond must be the persons own money (not leveraged against the club or loans), then if the club is in a position of administration, liquidation or wages not being paid, that bond is released to the club to cover X time period and the owner is then forced to sell the club as part of the purchase agreement (for a pre agreed calculation of value - ie: a calculation is agreed that is used at the time of bond release to state club value or something).

personally i think thats a good idea, owners would be more careful if they knew that if they took the club towards liquidation or werent paying club wages, their bond would be released, which they would then lose their own money, and they would be contractually forced to sell the club.

Obviously if they sold the club in a non admin/near liquidation/wages scenario etc, then they get the bond back when they sell.

I really like the idea, for example a Prem club needs a 12 month value bond, championship - 9 months, league 1 - 6 months and league 2 - 3 months.......or something?

would at least the club to be ran for a short period while the owner is forced to sell the club for an agreed reasonable price. (if the club is near liquidation etc).

 

the other option is all clubs pay 0.01% of their turnover or whatever in to a "pool", to support lower clubs, but i dunno, not sure i like that, doesnt encourage owners to "behave" and act in the best interest of the club, just to take money others are giving to them, i prefer a situation where the owner can be directly impacted by their actions running the club.

OR......maybe a bond agreement for all clubs like above (as in all league clubs pay a %, but obviously the money pot is redistributed unevelny so Prem clubs get nothing back, but the lower leagues get X per league or per club), but ALSO all clubs pay a tiny % of their turnover that is distributed evenly to all clubs on some sort of scale or calculation?, then all non Prem clubs get some financial support, even if small, but owners still have the bond agreement in place.

Edited August 26, 2019 by MaVilla

[sidcow]

It shows what a load of absolute bollocks FFP is though. 

We are told it's to stop clubs spending beyond their means, but we have 2 clubs going bust at the same time for spending beyond their means.  Clubs have gone bust before but what is the point of FFP if it doesn't stop it? 

[villalad21]

This could have been us last summer. We got lucky

[Davkaus]

13 minutes ago, sidcow said:

It shows what a load of absolute bollocks FFP is though. 

We are told it's to stop clubs spending beyond their means, but we have 2 clubs going bust at the same time for spending beyond their means.  Clubs have gone bust before but what is the point of FFP if it doesn't stop it? 

I don't know what I'm more surprised about, that FFP didn't help, or that matters weren't helped by the Fit and Proper Persons Test(should that be Fit And Proper Deliverer Of A Nice Lunch Test?).

[bannedfromHandV]

In an ideal world you’d have the FA keep a pot of money aside for seeing clubs through times like this but, in the cynical world we actually reside in people would just abuse it (as they do any benefit system).

I can’t believe that a consortium of ex players and fans can’t get together to bail them out, that said, I don’t know the extent of their debts which I assume are significant.

It will be a sad day to see a club like Bolton go bump but if they do, I’m sure they’ll reform and come back, it’s been done plenty of times (Wimbledon, Newport)

[villalad21]

Off topic but does anybody know if Portsmouth is still fan owned?

[Davkaus]

6 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Off topic but does anybody know if Portsmouth is still fan owned?

Nope. the supporter's trust sold it out to an American private equity firm.

They were pretty much forced to, Fratton Park was falling apart and they could afford to renovate it.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Davkaus

[DaveAV1]

It’s about time the EFL were investigated. The “Fit and Proper Person” test seems to be farcical. Dodgy owner after dodgy owner seem to get their snout in the trough. The latest TV rights deal was rubbish and the clubs were barely consulted. There was a meeting at VP of clubs to discuss their concerns. I think if we hadn’t been promoted and the EFL had got heavy about FFP, our owners and others would not have taken it lying down. 

Something stinks at the EFL. At the very least it is incompetence at the worst it is corruption on a grand scale. Possibly a combination of the two. It may not be on a PL scale, but there is a lot of money sloshing around the EFL, certainly enough to attract the wrong sort of businessman. Clubs get desperate to varying degrees and the more desperate the situation the lower the relative cost of entry gets and so the pond life squirm their way in. How was Xia and his set up ever allowed to own Aston Villa?

As other posters have said, we got seriously lucky last summer.  

[Mic09]

19 hours ago, Ingram85 said:

Well, looks like Bolton will be no more. Potential new buyers seem to have backed out of the the deal leaving the club ****.

Feel for the fans and staff. A real shame. Shows how devestating the absolute monopoly of the football elite cripples everything downhill from them. As stated above, this is about more than just dodgy owners.

While I understand the negative emotions towards the 'football elite' and the negative effect of institutions such as the Financial Fair Play, how would you judge who is in fact a 'good potential owner' ?

What sort of guidelines can the EFL implement to allow anyone to buy a club? Surely it's based on their cash flow, wouldn't any other condition be not only subjective but also discriminatory? 

[Davkaus]

I'm not sure how much more they can do to prevent the lawful sale of a private company that wouldn't cause protracted legal cases as soon as they claim someone isn't 'fit and proper'

The requirements seem fairly easy to pass; you basically can't have been a proven sports cheat, can't have been disqualified from being a company director,can't have been bankrupt, and can't be a convict. 

It doesn't seem to stop some (alleged ) conmen from being involved in clubs, but then,  there's selection bias there; who knows what kind of individuals would be taking over clubs if these rules weren't in place, that simply haven't tried because they know they can't pass?

[kurtsimonw]

Yeah, you can't really stop someone buying a club and say "you seem a bit dodgy".

[Mic09]

In which case, I would not blame the EFL for a club going down.

If we went into administration, I would not blame the EFL and no one should 'protect us' from going down. 

[villa4europe]

the only person you can blame is the current owner for being a word removed and the previous owner for selling it to a word removed

the EFL cant control how much Bolton's owner pays himself (or test it before the sale) more than any other regulator in the UK can with any other business owner

The TV deal value on the other hand is proper ropey and should be investigated , I agree there's incompetency at the EFL but don't think that's the reason this is happening

[kurtsimonw]

Given that Bolton and Bury are the first clubs in 6 years to go in to administration, I'd argue they're proof that the EFL/FFP does a great job rather than the opposite.

For reference, the previous 6 years to that, 23 clubs went in to administration.

[ender4]

32 minutes ago, kurtsimonw said:

Given that Bolton and Bury are the first clubs in 6 years to go in to administration, I'd argue they're proof that the EFL/FFP does a great job rather than the opposite.

For reference, the previous 6 years to that, 23 clubs went in to administration.

Thats a really interesting point.     I didn't know that.

[villa89]

21 hours ago, MaVilla said:

i saw an article somewhere a while back talking about how any new owners (or current owners), should be expected to put up front an amount of money in something like a bond, the amount would be based on the costs to run the club for 3, 6 or 12 months or whatever?

The money put in the bond must be the persons own money (not leveraged against the club or loans), then if the club is in a position of administration, liquidation or wages not being paid, that bond is released to the club to cover X time period and the owner is then forced to sell the club as part of the purchase agreement (for a pre agreed calculation of value - ie: a calculation is agreed that is used at the time of bond release to state club value or something).

personally i think thats a good idea,

I've been saying this for years. It stops someone borrowing money to gamble on a football club. Football clubs shouldn't be treated like any other business.

[useless]

Not sure where the money has gone at Bolton, looking on transfermarkt the last time they spent one million or more on a player was when they signed Jay Spearing for £1.4m from Liverpool in the 13/14 season, that summer they spent £1.9m, and since they've pretty much been signing players on free transfer exclusively, even in their first season in the championship after getting relegated they only spent £3.14m, so it's not as if they spent big then to try and come straight back up. They've also sold a few players for big money as well, like Tim Ream, Rob Holding, Zach Clough, and Gary Madine.

Not sure if judging whether the EFL are doing a good by looking at the number of teams that go into administration is going to give you give a completely accurate picture, we didn't go into admin, but Xia's ownership was still a disaster for us, and I'm sure there's been similar stories at other clubs. Also I'm not sure if FFP can be said to be doing a great job, if you've got clubs like ourselves, Derby, Wednesday and also small heath rumoured, all having to sell their grounds, despite having wealthy owners.

[Sam-AVFC]

2 hours ago, Davkaus said:

The requirements seem fairly easy to pass; you basically can't have been a proven sports cheat, can't have been disqualified from being a company director,can't have been bankrupt, and can't be a convict.

Unbelievably Bassini who they did approve and was apparently trying to take over was literally banned from owning a football club for three years for dodgy goings on when he owned Watford! He even went into bankruptcy a few years ago to avoid paying back other directors at Watford who sued and won.

Maybe it's just because it was such a desperate situation they needed to approve anyone who could afford to take over as administration was so close.

The stat about the numbers of clubs going into admin now compared to the past is a bit of an eye opener. I think the main problem at the moment is allowable losses completely hamstring Championship clubs in the current market. Ideally I'd like to see the Premier League filter down a much bigger share of TV monet to the football league rather than allowable losses increased, but pretty sure they only just agreed a new deal.