Seriously, anybody else stopped giving a hoot about the club?

Call me a shit fan if you want, im not. I'm just losing my rag with the pathetic way our club is run at the Min.

Total contempt for its fans.

No effort whatsoever to improve the squad - its like we DON'T WANT to get promoted. 

I really wouldn't be that arsed if we were in league 1, provided the club at least showed some effort in trying to improve, yet it does not.

We can still afford gartsides almost £1million a year wages, can afford to splash out on whatever it is they are building, yet cant afford to invest in the squad.

If I bought a product - whatever it was, and the general consensus among everyone who purchased it was that it was shit and the manufacturer was putting no effort in to improving that product - you would no longer buy it and/or demand a refund. Why should football be any different?

Unless I see a striker - BOUGHT AND PAID FOR NOT LOANED, im not renewing my ticket.

The coach I used to get to the match most matchdays has been cancelled as the 20-odd who used to get on it, only 2 have actually renewed their season tickets.

I'm sure its not just me.

With this new school thing Burnden Leisure is investing in (along with other private investors) makes me think that it could be some sort of fiddle to shift the debt over from the football side of things to comply with the FA rules along with ultimately to try and make money as well.

From discussions in the past having stated that there must be investors behind the scenes having pumped money in to the club in the past due to the money spent being more than Eddie is worth, I feel that due to the amount of debt we are in those investors probably don't want to part with any more money due to the high risk of never seeing it again and not seeing any return from the amount they have loaned to the club ever since.

Due to the amount of debt we are in, I really am surprised that the owners or whoever have let it get to this state of £120 Million+ and that Phil Gartside is still in a job there.

I feel that Eddie Davies really needs to pull his head from out of his arse and get things sorted ASAP as the reality is that with the amount of debt we are currently in plus the amount of money being spent on this new venture really could make or break the club!

I really do feel that we are finding it hard to rub two pennies together to buy players but that doesn't mean I don't agree with you RR.

Our best chance of bouncing back up was the first season we came back to the Championship and if the club had that little bit more ambition and spent a few more bob then we would have been back in the prem with the money.

I can only see this all getting worse due to the fact that the Championship money is peanuts in comparison and with the situation we are in financially, I can see us being stuck in this division for a few more seasons.

I think that if we were going to buy Juke then that would have been a done deal by now I feel.  With other clubs now sniffing around him (if true) will only put the price up.

I can't see us buying a decent striker that we so desperately need.

I don't think you can fault the level of investment since we came down.

Look at the wages spent on various players that a lot of clubs would have fucked off the minute they got relegated.

Look at Mills, Andrews, Spearing, Beckford, Medo, Baptiste, Hall. Disappointments maybe, unambitious signings, definitely not. Even the loan signings collectively might have costed a fortune.

Then obviously there's Freedman who was supposedly made the best paid manager in the league to come to Bolton.

I have despaired with the club for a long time, but over how the money's been spent, not the amount.

KP - My Major gripe with gartside is this - he is our Director, a man responsible for the day to day running of the business. Under his (and his fellow board members) leadership we have gone from a champions league contender to scrapping to stay in the championship in under 10 years! In ANY other line of business he would have been fired, possibly even banned from holding other directorships. Yet he STILL continues to leach nearly £1million quid a year from the club (not to mention a pretty hefty bonus, id imagine) Telling us we cannot afford, essentially nothing, yet taking all the cash and running.

Surely as a director, his 'wages' should be relative to the success of the company he's responsible for? 

For some reason - I dont think he wants us to do well, This is reflected in his attitude towards the clubs success. He cannot be stupid, he must KNOW that without any investment, we are going to be stuck in the championship losing more and more money, yet seems pretty happy with this. Also, il bring this back up - does anyone remember his "we dont want to get in to the champions league" crap? I cannot imagine ANY other club director that seemingly does not embrace potential success. 

Gartside bought a place on the board for peanuts back in the 4th div I think and seems happy to leech more and more money off us.

For all the money we have gained over the years, we see nothing in return - poorer clubs than us (well, clubs that were poorer) are ran better and reap more rewards. 

The Warburton family are the same too - WHY are these twats still on the board? Seriously, they invested about a fiver when we were in the 4th div and since then have invested NOTHING in the club yet take a massive dividend every year - I assume this finances the box they have at Old Trafford?

Personally, I don't think the club is going anywhere until Gartside goes and we get some fresh impetus going, a new chairman with new ideas and qualities to inspire the supporters instead of pissing them off. Fat Phil is old school. He comes across as a dodgy, smarmy, smug, self-satisfied individual and he's also a self-confessed fibber. This guy alone must put off a lot of potential investors.

When we first got relegated, the guy who collected my weekly Life-Line quid told me that the club had a five year plan to strip out as much of the week to week operating costs as they could before they even began to consider trying to get back up.

I said "Eh......? Seriously......?"

And he said "Yes."

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this story before on here, but he's not a nutter and is genuinely well connected with people inside the club, as other bits of stuff he's told me over the years have come true.

I'm starting to think he was telling the truth on this, as well.

He basically said that we were so far in debt, that dropping out of the Prem had long been seen as nothing short of disastrous, should it ever happen, so they'd come up with a contingency plan to deal with it if it ever did.

Then Columba The Useless went and did it and they had to roll out Operation: Manage The Debt, which basically involves flogging off anybody on a wage above a certain amount, signing hardly anybody on permanent contracts, loans, loans and more loans, and bringing the kids through.

By doing this, the club hopes to reduce operating costs / liabilities to the lowest possible level, stabilise financially and hopefully survive long enough in the Championship to be in a position to start challenging again by 2016.

Hence Freedman's uber-defensive approach (finishing 14th is fine by Garty) and our lack of available cash to sign The Juke.

At first I thought he was pulling my leg a bit but the more time wears on.......

i'm so glad i renewed my season ticket, thoroughly depressed even before pre-season has started  

My usual comments on this remain the same.  The club must be sold.  Automatically under new ownership most management will be gone on day 1 and a new direction is installed.
Happens everyday of the week in the business world.
Maybe we could Outsource Doogie's job to a bloke in Bangladore for one tenth his salary....

We are reducing operating costs and by god we need to. The biggest cost is players wages, we are getting rid of the big earners and replacing them with cheaper, hungrier players. I don't believe we will bring anyone else in for a transfer fee unless we sell Sordell and another one of our top earners.

I've fallen out of love with football years back - when the Sky money got so high and players and agents got so greedy that it stopped becoming entertainment for me and more of a 'how much more' can people screw out of the game.

Players on a quarter of a million pounds a week - just for kicking a ball - obscene.

BWFC is in the genes though, so even if my commonsense is why the fuck do you even give a damn anymore - I still do.

Bolton Till I Die I guess - just like the rest of us - even you Rebel - as even if you walk away from the club for the next two, three, ten seasons or more - one day something will happen, and you'll take an interest and the next thing you know you will be following the club again. I've seen it happen so many times.

We just can't help ourselves!

Bang on. I've been threatening to walk away since 1965. I pre-ordered the new shirt yesterday. Like Sluffy says 'it's in the genes', and tbh, the fact is I still luv it.

Reebok_Rebel wrote:Call me a shit fan if you want, im not. I'm just losing my rag with the pathetic way our club is run at the Min.

Total contempt for its fans.

No effort whatsoever to improve the squad - its like we DON'T WANT to get promoted. 

I really wouldn't be that arsed if we were in league 1, provided the club at least showed some effort in trying to improve, yet it does not.

We can still afford gartsides almost £1million a year wages, can afford to splash out on whatever it is they are building, yet cant afford to invest in the squad.

If I bought a product - whatever it was, and the general consensus among everyone who purchased it was that it was shit and the manufacturer was putting no effort in to improving that product - you would no longer buy it and/or demand a refund. Why should football be any different?

Unless I see a striker - BOUGHT AND PAID FOR NOT LOANED, im not renewing my ticket.

The coach I used to get to the match most matchdays has been cancelled as the 20-odd who used to get on it, only 2 have actually renewed their season tickets.

I'm sure its not just me.

I'm annoyed at the fact the club has been allowed to get into massive debt. I'm not annoyed that they're facing up to it and limiting the spending, it's shit but you have to face reality in that we're fucked.

We've made 5 signings already this summer, we'll definitely be making more, i just hope we can get some sort of quality for the pittance we can afford to pay.