What I can't understand...?

I thought yet another thread about the financial mess might be useful!

Joking apart there's lots of things about this mess but the one that baffles me is why they didn't see this coming.

What I mean is that the second half of last season we had a load of loan players like ALF and Bannon on fairly large wodges no doubt and we weren't pressing for promotion or bothered much about relegation, so I guess money was ok at that time.

Move forward to summer and there was the long protracted drama as to whether we would resign Bogdan and ALF - so I guess for the first time there was an inkling that money was no longer there.

But then why then give Wheater a new contract and sign Amos?

Either the money was there or it wasn't?

If it wasn't then why didn't start the selling off at that time instead of waiting until Nov/Dec?

Seems to me something happend around the start of the season and whatever it was didn't leave the club with any time for a plan B to go forward with.

Anybody got any views about this or have something different they can't understand about this whole sorry mess?

The only thing I can think of is that Eddie Davies has finally run out of patience with how long it was taking to find another buyer. Out of patience, goodwill and money probably.

Or pissed off with what he has found out.

Mr Magoo wrote:Or pissed off with what he has found out.

You'd think that the one guy who was nuts deep in credit would be all over the club's finances so any wool-pulling would have to have been done by his closest advisor.

Phil Gartside had oversight of all things operational so he's either kept ED in the dark or is very incompetent. Or both.

What is for sure is that our current situation has been brewing for quite some time - as former managers are quick to attest - so where were the alarm bells and what was the contingency plan?

Whichever way you stack it up, mismanagement is the conclusion. And I know it's a cliche but lack of appropriate communication/openness between ALL the stakeholders lies at the heart of it.

Is there an official line on Gartside's health condition?  Maybe its his kneecaps that are the problem.

I reckon Eddie finally realised Garty had made some serious errors that has lead to where we are now. Mistakes so big that he had no choice but to get rid but as he probably considers him a friend, he has given him an out by way of fabricating an illness so as to try and protect his professional reputation, or at least limit the damage to it. If he'd have just sacked him everyone would know for sure it's all PG's fault and shit would have come down on him big time. I think privately he's been fired and publicly he's ill.

The fact is that fans have seen this coming for years, pretty much everyone but Phil and Eddie have been worrying about the ever growing debt figure and it's been a long time since anyone swallowed the "It's not real debt" line. I don't know if Ed has fired Phil or not but I don't see how Phil could possibly return to the job in any case. Surely his position is now untenable after such a long running display of gross incompetence. Whatever happens next it's clear the club must be rebuilt from the top down and that Phil has to be the first to go.

I don't go along with that line of thinking.

Clearly there were other investors to Moonshift than just Davies - I tend to think Gartside was one of them, why else was Davies comfortable with him all the time?  If Gartside's own money was at risk surely he would be more likely to look after it the most?

I also tend to think Gartside probably is unwell, I doubt he could simply just hide away and think people would simply forget about him and he starts a new life after a reasonable break.

He must have been under a great deal of stress for a number of years, it would not be that surprising if it took its toll on him.

At the end of the day I would think Davies would still have his millions and it is Gartside that as ended up as the broken man.

It's just business to the men behind Moonshine, for us a football club to distract us for a while from real life but for Gartside it probably took a toll on his life.

I think he's probably suffered more than anybody and for that reason I think the hatred and abuse of him is unwarranted and out of any proportion to what he did which may I remind folk was simply to be employed and be paid to do a job.

If those employing him were at all unhappy with what he was doing for them he would have been gone years back.

sluffy, don't get me wrong. I am sure he is ill and I wish him a speedy recovery but the fact is he has basically overseen a decade of complete mismanagement while constantly lying through his teeth about the realities of the situation. His constant mantra that we weren't really in debt and the ludicrous statement at the beginning of last season when he claimed a lot of Championship clubs would love to be in our position are just two indicators of his complete incompetence and his total estrangement from facts. 

Whether he's a shareholder or not it doesn't excuse his behaviour and it doesn't make his failure any less catastrophic. Add in Eddie's stubborn insistence that Phil HAD to stay on as chairman under a new owner or he wouldn't sell and it's not hard to see why we are where we are. 

I don't hate Phil Gartside, I simply feel he should have been relieved of his duties long ago and that whatever happens next he should not return to the club as chairman. The man got a high six figure salary for his efforts and in any other line of business he would have been sacked long before now. I don't doubt the stress got to him but in all truth he brought much of that onto himself with his mismanagement and while I certainly don't wish him ill I definitely don't want to see him back. And yes, I agree Eddie has to take a lot of if not most of the blame for sticking with Phil when it was clear to even the most obtuse of us that it wasn't working. 

No offence but if I'd been a major investor in BWFC I'd have been asking for Phil's resignation several years ago. It's not hatred, it's not personal, it's just he was clearly out of his depth and unable to run the business competently. As you say he was an employee paid to do a job but he failed to do that job so what else should be done other than replace him?

Everything PG did at Bolton was fully sanctioned, endorsed and encouraged by Eddie Davies.

In fact, I'd say it was more than that: PG was acting on ED's direct instructions most of the time.

Does anybody really think that ED hasn't been puling the strings all along?

My point Peter is that Gartside was the 'monkey' not the 'organ grinder'.

He was in effect simply a paid EMPLOYEE doing what his bosses told him.

He was just the messenger - the public front.

And like most messangers he is the one being shot.

I suggest you and many, many others need to look beyond him and direct your ire at those who were telling him what to do and say and who were the puppet master pulling his strings.

i agree with Sluffy, Davies had no interest in being the face of the club and in the limelight so he chose Gartside to be the front man and paid him very well for it. Trouble is when we were doing well he was always spouting off and when it went tits up the silence was deafening.

Eddie Davies does deserve credit for taking over the club and financing all the good years in the top flight but his actions now shame him in my opinion

Absolutely sluffy, couldn't agree more but the fact remains Gartside got paid an awful lot of money to be the monkey and he was supposed to run the business on a day to day basis. I think even you have to admit he failed to do his job and like any employee who does that he should lose it. My anger is directed partly at him for his gross incompetence and outright dishonesty but far more of it is directed at the string pullers and Eddie who sat back and let it all happen for reasons I still don't pretend to comprehend. What really bothers me is that if or more likely when we go into admin those un-named investors will be able to walk away clean or 'buy' the club out of admin for a pittance and strip the assets for a hefty profit. 

Gartside alone is not responsible but it was his name on the big desk and he plus the people who put it there all deserve to go. I want him to recover from his illness and I hope he does so and enjoys a long, healthy and happy retirement but I would be furious if he's still chairman after the dust on this mess finally settles.

BWFC has been Eddie's toy since he took over.  I have no idea how he amassed his fortune before BWFC but as far a running a football club .... a tad incompetent wouldn't you say.
Of course we appreciate keeping it running through the years but were was the financial plan that all businesses have to have to survive. So now Ed has lost his money, the club is close to belly up...it's a right ol mess Ollie

terenceanne wrote:BWFC has been Eddie's toy since he took over.  I have no idea how he amassed his fortune before BWFC but as far a running a football club .... a tad incompetent wouldn't you say.
Of course we appreciate keeping it running through the years but were was the financial plan that all businesses have to have to survive. So now Ed has lost his money, the club is close to belly up...it's a right ol mess Ollie

Mainly kettle elements terrence. He made quite a pile manufacturing them for a lot of different firms.

We can only guess where the responsibility lies, gawp at the enormity of the mess we're in and go boggleyed in disbelief when we consider the degree of management failure required to allow the situation to get so far without being straight with the fans.

No doubt the truth will out some day.

wanderlust wrote:We can only guess where the responsibility lies, gawp at the enormity of the mess we're in and go boggleyed in disbelief when we consider the degree of management failure required to allow the situation to get so far without being straight with the fans.

No doubt the truth will out some day.

The truth will out some day? It won't if some folk can help it. You were conned by the media and social media, preferred being conned and still prefer being conned.

I wonder what happened to frankandbill and any sense of reason?

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Good interview - but it will do nothing to silence the current crop of dissidents.

Those attacking the owner, the chairman and the board aren't really listening to the argument - they've already made up their minds based on a deeper sense of frustration and grievance about things far bigger than football and BWFC.

I just hope that those of us who call ourselves fans (as opposed to passive consumers) resist the urge to join the bandwagon built by the cynics and conspiracy theorists

Given the thread title, this one's going to run and run.....

I can't say I remember much of frankandbill? Probably gave up long ago trying to stem the tide of vile and mindless abuse.

The 2014 Q&A between Iles and Gartside was worthwhile but not many learned from it? Iles certainly didn't and still hasn't.