If Bolton Wanderers dies, I'm going to support...

Portmore United. That's my local club of choice - currently leading the league although they were promoted this year. You?

Bolton till I die

No one. If BWFC dies I'm with sluffy. I've already lost a lot of interest in football, it's been dying ever since the start of the Prem Era and accelerating in the last few years as our intelligence and patience were insulted time and time again by ED, PG and their cronies at the Bolton News. 

Frankly I can't be bothered trying to raise enthusiasm and support for another club, especially after forty years of following this one.

Sick of people copying my threads.

Natasha Whittam wrote:Sick of people copying my threads.

 says the person who recycles the same threads time and time again 

I don't think i could follow another team, i would probably just go to different local clubs now and again. I would find it hard not to go to any football as i've been a regular for nearly 30 years

A team in norfolk or scotland so i can be an armchair fan even more so than i am already. But if i support a team in scotland i will just slag them off all the time and compare their shit fans to another teams great fans.

Chippa United in South African PSL. Only got promotion last season and like us for years are punching above their weight. They have a tricky match at the Buffalo City Stadium this week against Ajax Cape Town before playing  the joint league leaders Mpumalanga Black Aces away the following week..................

Norpig wrote:
 says the person who recycles the same threads time and time again 

I pick topics that are in the public eye, I don't recycle threads I (or anyone else) wrote 3 days ago.

Every single thread that is started today will have been done before somewhere.

You fooking bellend.

I was just about to start a thread called "A Tiger's just run through my garden being chased by Michael Barrymore carrying a wedding cake!" but if it's been done before, I'll leave it.

Cheers for the heads-up, Nat.

Breadman wrote:I was just about to start a thread called "A Tiger's just run through my garden being chased by Michael Barrymore carrying a wedding cake!" but if it's been done before, I'll leave it.

Cheers for the heads-up, Nat.

Fair play, while a tiger running through my garden being chased by Michael Barrymore has been done before, he wasn't carrying a wedding cake.

I stand corrected.

I'm just getting tired of all these doom and gloom threads about the demise of BWFC. It may have passed some people by but we still exist.

Only just.

I think we're at that bit in the film where the medical team have been doing CPR on the hero for five minutes and the doctor snaps his latex gloves off and says "Ok, time to call it" and looks up at the clock on the wall.

But then some young nurse says "No! He can't die! One more try!"

So they do and miraculously the hero survives.

But this ain't Hollywood, so in our case the hero will have suffered irreparable brain damage, brought on by oxygen starvation and will spend the rest of his days crapping into a nappy and being fed through a tube.

Natasha Whittam wrote:

Norpig wrote:
 says the person who recycles the same threads time and time again 

I pick topics that are in the public eye, I don't recycle threads I (or anyone else) wrote 3 days ago.

Every single thread that is started today will have been done before somewhere.

You fooking bellend.

 so your threads on fat people and depression for example haven't done the rounds under one guise or another more than once? 

Breadman wrote:Only just.

I think we're at that bit in the film where the medical team have been doing CPR on the hero for five minutes and the doctor snaps his latex gloves off and says "Ok, time to call it" and looks up at the clock on the wall.

But then some young nurse says "No! He can't die! One more try!"

So they do and miraculously the hero survives.

But this ain't Hollywood, so in our case the hero will have suffered irreparable brain damage, brought on by oxygen starvation and will spend the rest of his days crapping into a nappy and being fed through a tube.

Perhaps, but we've known that the immediate future would be bleak for a long time now and the point has been made ad infinitum and beyond.

The reality is bad enough but then when a monstrous steaming pile of total guesswork is added to the mix - all of which is based on negative bordering on libellous assumptions about "what people are thinking" and "what people's intentions are" it just gets worse and worse. Throw in the equation (no information = something is wrong/somebody is plotting) and you've got all the ingredients required for the pure unadulterated hysteria we are regularly witnessing on here.

Not what's needed or wanted when times get tough.

I know it's frustrating, especially the lack of information coming out of the club regarding the potential sale, but silence is entirely understandable whilst negotiations continue - and it doesn't necessarily mean the worst case scenario that many posters assume it does. It means they're negotiating.

You of all people on here know that you can't just think about the "immediate future" of any business and you need a long-term strategy locked down and in place if you're going to survive, let alone thrive.

But we're at a point in the club's history where that isn't an option because we don't know who will own the club in a month, let alone what the plan is.

And that's why people are speculating about what's going to happen.

Because, in the absence of any updates coming from within the club (for what may well be legitimate reasons as you say), it's left to people to form their own opinions based off what slender information they do have.

All we have heard is that no one is anywhere close to shaking hands on a deal because ED is still waiting to see proof that some money exists up front.

And it's been going on for weeks now.

And that's worrying because it makes people (quite naturally) conclude that the potential buyers don't have the funding in place and that leads onto more speculation regarding (A) where the funding will eventually come form and (B) what their intentions are.

It's all perfectly normal and I'd be more concerned if everybody was just sitting back and saying "Oh well, they must know what they're doing and we can trust them to sort it all out" because that's the type of thinking that's got us in this mess.

A mess which could conceivably see the end of BWFC.

Breadman wrote:You of all people on here know that you can't just think about the "immediate future" of any business and you need a long-term strategy locked down and in place if you're going to survive, let alone thrive.

But we're at a point in the club's history where that isn't an option because we don't know who will own the club in a month, let alone what the plan is.

And that's why people are speculating about what's going to happen.

Because, in the absence of any updates coming from within the club (for what may well be legitimate reasons as you say), it's left to people to form their own opinions based off what slender information they do have.

All we have heard is that no one is anywhere close to shaking hands on a deal because ED is still waiting to see proof that some money exists up front.

And it's been going on for weeks now.

And that's worrying because it makes people (quite naturally) conclude that the potential buyers don't have the funding in place and that leads onto more speculation regarding (A) where the funding will eventually come form and (B) what their intentions are.

It's all perfectly normal and I'd be more concerned if everybody was just sitting back and saying "Oh well, they must know what they're doing and we can trust them to sort it all out" because that's the type of thinking that's got us in this mess.

A mess which could conceivably see the end of BWFC.

There is no long-term plan in place ATM because there are allegedly several different plans on the table and nobody knows who will end up with the right to execute theirs - or what that plan entails.

So speculate away by all means, but it would be nice if a) it was caveated as being pure speculation and b) it wasn't all worst case scenario thinking.

Obviously it's a lot easier to snipe at the participants in this drama and point out the obvious pitfalls of our situation than paint a scenario where we come out of it reasonably intact albeit having to accept that we are not a rich club anymore. 

I don't think anyone is thinking anyone can be trusted to sort it out given the unmitigated financial incompetence that got us here, but that doesn't mean that it won't get sorted out.

Can you honestly envisage a plausible scenario where we "come out of it reasonably intact"?


I would love to, but I can't.


We're stuck in some weird "reasonably recent members of the Premier League with resultant running costs and overheads" hinterland and I think that's the main problem.


We're too big just to say "Slash everything to try and shave a few quid off the operating costs" because our infrastructure's simply too bulky and it's become a real burden.


The stadium is now far too big for our needs and we can't afford to run it.


But we can't sell it, so it's hanging there like the proverbial albatross and instead of being an asset, it's effectively switched columns and become a cost.


And I'm struggling to see how any model going forward can incorporate it within the plan.


I honestly think that any potential buyer will have to seriously look at leaving Horwich and entering into a ground share with somebody else.


Sorry if it seems that I'm only considering this in "worst case scenario" terms but I honestly believe that's how we need to be approaching this because it's too late for anything else.


All speculation and without prejudice. 

Breadman wrote:Can you honestly envisage a plausible scenario where we "come out of it reasonably intact"?

Yes  - there are many.
One of the simplest ones is that one of the four buyers demonstrates an interest in keeping BWFC afloat to ED, they agree a deal for EDs shares and the buyer pays off the debt and life carries on as if nothing had happened.

Other scenarios are better e.g. if the buyer has sufficient funds to invest in the team - although if we are to stay in the Championship short term, the deal would have to be done and the debt sorted before the transfer window ends.

Even relegation but with financial stability and a sustainable model in place would be a decent result for us.

Whoever takes over, we are pretty much guaranteed a better business plan and a better management team than we've had in recent years. And we could even get a new Chairman with real business acumen who takes the club forward to the premiership and Europe in time.

In the absence of any concrete information there are as many plausible positive scenarios as there are plausible negative scenarios - it's just that we only hear the negative ones on this forum.

But that's my whole point - I simply can't envisage any scenario where a "sustainable model" can be applied to what we've got.

It's all far too bulky and has far too much inherent "leakage" built in to the infrastructure.

If we could potentially get the missing 15,000 fans back next week and they all started pumping their money in in vast quantities via the concessions, like back in the heady days of the Prem under Allardyce, then it might just work.

But we both know that ain't going to happen.

Whoever takes ownership is buying a Scania juggernaut complete with three or four forty foot trailers to transport one cow to market.

But the Scania's got dodgy brakes and it leaks oil everywhere so nobody's interested in taking it in part-ex for a far more sensible Tranny van.

So I can't understand why anybody would buy it unless they had one eye on its scrap value and weren't really interested in the cow.

Sort of........

Impossible to support anyone else.