The Proposed Takeover of Bolton Wanderers: Why I’m not as Excited as I Should Be

The prospect of a change of regime at Bolton Wanderers is exciting. The idea of a fresh slate and some investment in the first team is exhilarating.

So you might ask based on that why I have titled this with ‘why I’m not as excited as I should be’.

There is one overwhelming reason for this. Where is this money coming from and who is actually going to own our precious club. Now I will say now I trust Eddie Davies and Phil Gartside to find the right buyer for Bolton. To find someone who will try and take the club in the right direction and not someone out to make a quick buck off our many assets.

But getting a person who cares about the future of the club is of course only half of the challenge. There is also the necessity of investment. Everyone is excitedly talking about what will happen when Neil Lennon gets money or even about sacking him and buying Phil Brown out of his contract at Southend United. But where is the money going to come from for that?

This whole situation smells a little bit to me. It smells a bit of a consortium of people who maybe don’t have pockets deep enough to make even our most realistic dreams of this takeover come true. Now of course I hope I am being overly pessimistic here and that there are some rich people in this consortium. There are many rich people out there who could look at a club like Bolton and see the potential with sound management.

But what happens if they are not rich. Well for starters that January transfer kitty we are hoping for disappears. The hopes of that Premier League striker in in January fly out of the window. Along with it goes any player we can flog off in order to reduce the clubs annual loss. And of course for those out there who want to see Lennon gone and Brown in, well dream on because we wouldn’t even be able to afford to get rid of Lennon let alone buy Brown out.

So what would the result of that be then? Well most likely League One football. Maybe not this season, maybe not next, but if we do not have money to strengthen it is inevitable. We would then have to cut costs again most likely and then who knows maybe the process of the last few years would repeat itself. As it happens that’s the exact course I fear we are on at the moment so the result of it would be nothing would change.

The only real result would be that we would replace someone who is unwilling, though probably capable of, putting his hand in his pocket with a consortium of people who even if they wanted to put their hands in their pockets cannot.

Like I say above I hope I am wrong and being overly cautious about this. But I do seriously fear that I am not, and that this could if anything be worse for Bolton’s long term future than what we have at the moment.