Crimes against Bolton Wanderers

This is my first post on the forum despite reading for a while. I was just coming on to post this link when I spotted it was already on here.

I think this article is absolutely spot on and a lot of Bolton fans should read this before commenting on our current situation. I was never a fan of Megson and wanted him out that club at the time, but despite this authors smugness, he is right, and he has " told us so".

Our best players are those brought in my Megson. I hate to say it, but it would be interesting to see how we would have turned out if we kept him.  Coyle, despite how much of a nice guy he is, was an absolute disaster as a football manager for us. Not sure if its true but I heard Swansea have a lower wage total then we do.

More then ever I think we need patience in our current situation. Every week I see Bolton fans complaining to get rid of dougie, but then what? He has inherited this bucket of shit from our previous manager and anyone (if we could afford anyone) who would replace him as manager would be in the exactly same situation and would probably be faring much worse.

This article is a must read for any Bolton fan I feel. Credit to the author, despite that fact he sounds like abit of a twat.

The team was on the way down under Megson, i don't think anyone would disagree with that.

sprayduster2001 wrote:

More then ever I think we need patience in our current situation. Every week I see Bolton fans complaining to get rid of dougie, but then what? He has inherited this bucket of shit from our previous manager and anyone (if we could afford anyone) who would replace him as manager would be in the exactly same situation and would probably be faring much worse.

I acknowledge that Dougie came to a club in trouble, with a squad of overpaid shite.

However, I expect to see green shoots of recovery after over 12 months in the job - the truth is there have been none and we are in an arguably worse position than when Coyle left.

Dougie is too negative despite it rarely working, his signings have been just as bad as Coyle's (albeit not as expensive) and he simply has no tactical nouse whatsoever. Add to that he hasn't tried or brought through a single youth player and it all adds up to a poor manager out of his depth.

Dougie is too negative despite it rarely working, his signings have been just as bad as Coyle's (albeit not as expensive) and he simply has no tactical nouse whatsoever. Add to that he hasn't tried or brought through a single youth player and it all adds up to a poor manager out of his depth.

 
I agree Dougie hasn't turned out how any of us wanted so far. But surely having some stability will benefit us in the upcoming seasons more then gambling on some manager from the lower leagues? Which is most likely the only type of manager we could afford at the moment, due to the cost of paying off dougie if we did get rid.

I doubt we could attract a better manager for us at the moment then Dougie Freedman coupled with Lennie Lawrence's experience. Its the best of a bad situation and just getting rid won't prove to be a miraculous solution, just put us in either a similar situation we are now, underperforming, or worse we could go down the route of Wolves.

sprayduster2001 wrote:

More then ever I think we need patience in our current situation. Every week I see Bolton fans complaining to get rid of dougie, but then what? He has inherited this bucket of shit from our previous manager and anyone (if we could afford anyone) who would replace him as manager would be in the exactly same situation and would probably be faring much worse.

Sprayduster, you have hit the nail on the head.

sprayduster2001 wrote:
 
I agree Dougie hasn't turned out how any of us wanted so far. But surely having some stability will benefit us in the upcoming seasons more then gambling on some manager from the lower leagues? Which is most likely the only type of manager we could afford at the moment, due to the cost of paying off dougie if we did get rid.

I doubt we could attract a better manager for us at the moment then Dougie Freedman coupled with Lennie Lawrence's experience. Its the best of a bad situation and just getting rid won't prove to be a miraculous solution, just put us in either a similar situation we are now, underperforming, or worse we could go down the route of Wolves.

Wolves are near the top of League 1 and will get promoted thus giving them minor success and momentum. And they are a much better run club than us.

Do you honestly think Freedman is giving us stability? We're only a handful of palaces off the bottom 3. Any manager is a gamble whether he's in League 2 or the Premier League - but there are some good managers in the lower leagues who would be a fair bet to have more tactical nouse than Douglas.

The biggest crime against Bolton Wanderers by far is the fact that the bloke who is undeniably ultimately responsible for ALL these crimes against Bolton Wanderers is not only still employed by the club but still calling the shots. Whoever said there is no power without responsibility had clearly never met Phil Gartside.

You see, I don't 'get' this thing about Gartside.

You are not telling me that if you (Eddie Davies) had 'trusted' someone (Phil Gartside) to run your business (Bolton Wanderers) and he blew £170 million, then you would not have sacked him long, long, long before now - indeed you would probably have put a contract out on him if he had! (Only joking about that by the way).

SO if Davies hasn't wanted to sack Gartside by now, THEN Gartside MUST be running the club how Davies wants it to have been run to date.

I don't know WHY that must be but why else would you keep Gartside when he has just blown all your life savings (and more besides)?

At the end of the day Davies IS the boss and Gartside the paid employee.

Gartside is there to do Davies bidding - whatever that may be - and the fact that he is still in a job earning around half a million per year, shows that he must be doing that job to the satisfaction of Davies.

People can moan about Gartside all they want but the only fact that matters is that Davies is obviously pleased with what Gartside is doing. This isn't simply about the club - there is a much bigger picture with the club only a fraction of it.

This is about big business and not just a footy club - and that is why Gartside is still being paid to do whatever it is that he is doing, by Davies.

Sluffy wrote:You see, I don't 'get' this thing about Gartside.

You are not telling me that if you (Eddie Davies) had 'trusted' someone (Phil Gartside) to run your business (Bolton Wanderers) and he blew £170 million, then you would not have sacked him long, long, long before now - indeed you would probably have put a contract out on him if he had!  (Only joking about that by the way).

SO if Davies hasn't wanted to sack Gartside by now, THEN Gartside MUST be running the club how Davies wants it to have been run to date.

I don't know WHY that must be but why else would you keep Gartside when he has just blown all your life savings (and more besides)?

At the end of the day Davies IS the boss and Gartside the paid employee.

Gartside is there to do Davies bidding - whatever that may be - and the fact that he is still in a job earning around half a million per year, shows that he must be doing that job to the satisfaction of Davies.

People can moan about Gartside all they want but the only fact that matters is that Davies is obviously pleased with what Gartside is doing.  This isn't simply about the club - there is a much bigger picture with the club only a fraction of it.

This is about big business and not just a footy club - and that is why Gartside is still being paid to do whatever it is that he is doing, by Davies.

Either that or Phil has some very incriminating pictures of Eddie that involve Renee, Nicole, a twelve volt hairdryer and an egg whisk.   

On a more serious note I think there must be something going on in the deep background. My instinct is that Eddie is simply not that interested in Burnden Leisure as a whole anymore, that he may be simply biding time waiting for someone to come and buy his stake off him and let them deal with the whole Gartside management question but I can't see why he'd do that. 

I can't believe he's happy with the situation now, not when the current debt stands at six times the club's last years turnover. No business has pockets that deep and unless Eddie knows something big is in the offing like a foreign buy out by some sheikh from Dubai then he HAS to be looking at ways of getting the club out of this mess and he HAS to be looking hard at Gartside's competence. I realise they are pals but at the end of the day this is business and Eddie isn't stupid, he must see how badly run the business is and how little it would now take to see us drop even further down the pyramid. When total revenue is lower than just the staff's wages let alone the other overheads then it simply can't be ignored and something has to change fast. 

Never mind the 'one off' costs like buying out De Vere's, the fact is that BWFC are teetering on the edge of the abyss and that with UEFA now stating clubs that don't follow the FFP rules will be placed under a transfer embargo we really are on the brink of complete and total destruction. I fear for us, really and truly fear that we will soon be back in the same place we were when Eddie arrived but with no one willing to come in and save us this time.

Megson's purchases were to replace the large number of Premiership players that left us and he attempted to do it like-for-like quality wise - with mixed results.
Whilst his purchases were OK the sales of Cahill and others and the running down of contracts like Elmander's lost us a fortune.
Coyle's buys were more desperate IMO - more of a gamble to keep us up and I reckon they were an unmitigated disaster either through backing unproven players in the hope they'd come good or through bad luck with injuries.
And if you're gambling like that there's always a chance that things can go very wrong if you haven't got a fall back position which Coyle didn't.
Gartside and Eddie backed all this speculative buying.
Perhaps moderate success and years in the Premiership affected their judgment.
Even now they're planning for a return to the Prem next season even though it doesn't stack up financially to invest the requisite money.
It could have worked out differently. Holden might have remained uninjured and been a force. Cahill might have stayed or at least been sold at a greater profit and some of the gambles like Sordell might have come off.
But it didn't work out that way and what we're left with is a sad tale of a gambler that didn't know when to quit.

If Holden had stayed fit we would probably have stayed up. However the following season would almost certainly have been a disaster with Coyle still in charge. If Coyle was a gambler he didn't back up his own bets - was Sordell ever really given a chance - and he was strangely reluctant to fold a bad hand - look at the amount of time SKD spent on the pitch in 2012.