At the moment, many Wanderers fans have questions. What's happening to our club? Are we going into administration? Who's going to take over? How the fuck is Stephen Dobbie a professional footballer?
Sadly we will never be graced with the answers to any of these queries (particularly the latter), and what little we know is often twisted and distorted beyond belief as it passes through the Bolton Wanderers rumour mill.
Despite all this, a report tonight by The Times suggested that HMRC are preparing to issue a winding-up petition to our beloved club as they seek a sum believed to be in the region of £2million for outstanding PAYE and VAT payments. Essentially, to normal people like you and me, that means we owe the government money and they're not very happy about it, so they want it back. A winding up order allows them to formally request we pay them back within 21 days - if we don't, or can't, we'll have to go into administration. At the moment the general consensus is that our days are numbered and administration is more than likely, UNLESS we can find a buyer.
As we all know, the club is supposedly losing around £1million a month and the first team players still haven't received their wages for the month of November. (If anything, Dobbie should be repaying his after that miss on Saturday.) It has also been reported by various news/media sources that there are three "serious" bids currently in the running to take over the club: one consortium fronted by Dean Holdsworth, another by Stelios Giannakopoulos and a third by a Middle Eastern group with ties to the local area. I've also heard whisperings that people from the Far East, a tribe from Timbuktu and a group staff members from McDonald's Middlebrook are reportedly showing interest.
Realistically, we don't know much. Let's hope Big Trev can give us another announcement in the coming days.
If you're feeling just as down as I am, come and have a cry with me on Twitter: @JonnyEckersley