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"IT’S fair to say that my relationship with Phil Gartside had its ups and downs.
On the wall of my toilet at home hangs a framed email, dated September 2009, which asks my editor who the newspaper intended to send to cover Bolton Wanderers games, as the club no longer wanted to deal with me.
Long story short, the chairman and I had a fall-out over some information that had appeared on the paper’s message board – which in the first 18 months of this job, was basically the bane of my life.
It felt like the end of the world at the time. But it was quickly resolved. It certainly wouldn’t be the last time that social media became a bone of contention between us.
Just a few months earlier I had been out on my first pre-season tour with Wanderers, following Gary Megson’s team around Greece. Phil, his son Andy, and a particularly hard-drinking press team had been terrific company on that trip.
I’d sat with the chairman in a hotel lobby chatting over his thoughts on the club and wider issues in football. And it was here that I first heard his plan for a two-tier Premier League. He would later repeat this on the record, and give me one of the biggest stories of my career to that point.
Though things were more relaxed in the Premier League days, Phil still took too much notice of internet forums, and later Twitter, despite constant advice to ignore them altogether.
He had a tendency to shoot from the hip and his humour could be very dry indeed. I can see the look on his face when re-tweeting some “graphic” criticism of Arsene Wenger’s attempts to sign Gary Cahill, or when passing through Gary Megson’s home town of Sheffield and referring to it as “Ginger Whinger territory”. It was all fun to him and wasn’t meant to be personal.
But some sides of social media and the internet didn’t sit well. Criticism nagged away at him and he became very bitter about certain issues.
Sam Allardyce’s departure was a particular bugbear. Sammy Lee’s appointment was done with the best intentions and yet it became about something else. The chairman felt the board were not given enough credit for the successful years or for how the club had been built from humble beginnings into a recognised top-flight force.
Through Gary Megson’s stormy reign and into the brighter days of Owen Coyle’s arrival, there was a considerable distance between myself and Phil. He felt the newspaper was too negative, and I look back and wish I had worked harder to keep some dialogue open.
We spoke on rare occasions but in those days the communications director Mark Alderton acted as the go-between. There wouldn’t have been enough money in the world to tempt me to do his job back then.
Phil took relegation particularly hard. He had been through the mill after Fabrice Muamba’s collapse – one of the rare occasions we found ourselves on the same page – and I felt there was no way back. I have never been officially banned by Wanderers, although Phil was more one for taking so-called privileges away, like talking to players or being invited to events. One pre-season saw me follow Owen Coyle’s team round Scotland for eight days with no access to the manager, players or staff except for directly after games. In the event, I shared a hotel with the squads of Everton and Huddersfield Town.
We kept a stiff upper lip for the purposes of the newspaper. And thanks to some very professional staff the coverage didn’t suffer much, even in the hardest times.
Once Wanderers became a Championship club there was a slight thawing in the relationship. The proposed QuickQuid sponsorship forced things to a head, as we took the fans’ complaints directly to Phil, who listened and acted. One fan even thanked him with an advert in our paper.
From there things improved. Possibly prompted by his son, who I have always had a lot of time for, Phil became more approachable. He also became more resilient to the criticism that came his way.
Being outside the Premier League was a massive culture shock. Good people left the club, many of whom I still call friends, and Phil’s attention shifted slightly away from the football.
This article is intended to explain how a lifelong Wanderers fan lost some of his passion for the game, but by no means the club.
The ongoing legal case with agent Tony McGill gnawed away, and though still fairly accessible to the media he distanced himself from speaking in public as Dougie Freedman then Neil Lennon became the club’s mouthpiece.
I found that a great shame because his knowledge of the inner workings of the game made for fascinating subject matter.
Had he done more to talk about financial issues at the club, rather than rely on interpretations of the accounts, I think the current situation would not have hit people so unexpectedly.
When the McGill court case was finally thrown out I was given my own summons to the Macron, where Phil was waiting to get seven years of legal anger off his chest. I allowed him to set the agenda and after five minutes of him venting that anger, it was as if he’d transported back to the Premier League days. Laughing and joking about Big Sam’s upcoming autobiography, it was good to see him back again.
He knew that fans wanted answers, though, and what turned out to be the last time I spoke to Phil was on the topic of administration. I had been pestering him for an interview on the record at a time when he had not been feeling well. We’d informally agreed to speak after the weekend but late on Friday night an article appeared on the Daily Mail website that claimed the club was about to hit the wall.
Phil had been poorly and was with his family at a bonfire; so was I. Set against the backdrop of fireworks punctuated by random explosions little did I know the touch paper really had been lit. He promised that no jobs were under immediate threat, administration was not imminent, and that he would release a statement immediately confirming exactly that.
Just a few days later he went to hospital for tests. My interview was shelved and by the time Trevor Birch had been appointed a few weeks later we knew the illness had really taken hold.
His passing leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the decisions that got Wanderers into the position they are in. And in the last few months, that has caused a lot of directionless anger. But I am encouraged by the compassion that has been shown by the fans over the last few days.
One thing I know for sure, my time covering Wanderers would have been much less eventful had it not been for Phil Gartside and I consider myself a better journalist for having worked with him."
http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/14273904.Marc_Iles__Dealing_with_Bolton_Wanderers_chairman_Phil_Gartside_was_difficult_but_eventful/?ref=mr&lp=17
On the wall of my toilet at home hangs a framed email, dated September 2009, which asks my editor who the newspaper intended to send to cover Bolton Wanderers games, as the club no longer wanted to deal with me.
Long story short, the chairman and I had a fall-out over some information that had appeared on the paper’s message board – which in the first 18 months of this job, was basically the bane of my life.
It felt like the end of the world at the time. But it was quickly resolved. It certainly wouldn’t be the last time that social media became a bone of contention between us.
Just a few months earlier I had been out on my first pre-season tour with Wanderers, following Gary Megson’s team around Greece. Phil, his son Andy, and a particularly hard-drinking press team had been terrific company on that trip.
I’d sat with the chairman in a hotel lobby chatting over his thoughts on the club and wider issues in football. And it was here that I first heard his plan for a two-tier Premier League. He would later repeat this on the record, and give me one of the biggest stories of my career to that point.
Though things were more relaxed in the Premier League days, Phil still took too much notice of internet forums, and later Twitter, despite constant advice to ignore them altogether.
He had a tendency to shoot from the hip and his humour could be very dry indeed. I can see the look on his face when re-tweeting some “graphic” criticism of Arsene Wenger’s attempts to sign Gary Cahill, or when passing through Gary Megson’s home town of Sheffield and referring to it as “Ginger Whinger territory”. It was all fun to him and wasn’t meant to be personal.
But some sides of social media and the internet didn’t sit well. Criticism nagged away at him and he became very bitter about certain issues.
Sam Allardyce’s departure was a particular bugbear. Sammy Lee’s appointment was done with the best intentions and yet it became about something else. The chairman felt the board were not given enough credit for the successful years or for how the club had been built from humble beginnings into a recognised top-flight force.
Through Gary Megson’s stormy reign and into the brighter days of Owen Coyle’s arrival, there was a considerable distance between myself and Phil. He felt the newspaper was too negative, and I look back and wish I had worked harder to keep some dialogue open.
We spoke on rare occasions but in those days the communications director Mark Alderton acted as the go-between. There wouldn’t have been enough money in the world to tempt me to do his job back then.
Phil took relegation particularly hard. He had been through the mill after Fabrice Muamba’s collapse – one of the rare occasions we found ourselves on the same page – and I felt there was no way back. I have never been officially banned by Wanderers, although Phil was more one for taking so-called privileges away, like talking to players or being invited to events. One pre-season saw me follow Owen Coyle’s team round Scotland for eight days with no access to the manager, players or staff except for directly after games. In the event, I shared a hotel with the squads of Everton and Huddersfield Town.
We kept a stiff upper lip for the purposes of the newspaper. And thanks to some very professional staff the coverage didn’t suffer much, even in the hardest times.
Once Wanderers became a Championship club there was a slight thawing in the relationship. The proposed QuickQuid sponsorship forced things to a head, as we took the fans’ complaints directly to Phil, who listened and acted. One fan even thanked him with an advert in our paper.
From there things improved. Possibly prompted by his son, who I have always had a lot of time for, Phil became more approachable. He also became more resilient to the criticism that came his way.
Being outside the Premier League was a massive culture shock. Good people left the club, many of whom I still call friends, and Phil’s attention shifted slightly away from the football.
This article is intended to explain how a lifelong Wanderers fan lost some of his passion for the game, but by no means the club.
The ongoing legal case with agent Tony McGill gnawed away, and though still fairly accessible to the media he distanced himself from speaking in public as Dougie Freedman then Neil Lennon became the club’s mouthpiece.
I found that a great shame because his knowledge of the inner workings of the game made for fascinating subject matter.
Had he done more to talk about financial issues at the club, rather than rely on interpretations of the accounts, I think the current situation would not have hit people so unexpectedly.
When the McGill court case was finally thrown out I was given my own summons to the Macron, where Phil was waiting to get seven years of legal anger off his chest. I allowed him to set the agenda and after five minutes of him venting that anger, it was as if he’d transported back to the Premier League days. Laughing and joking about Big Sam’s upcoming autobiography, it was good to see him back again.
He knew that fans wanted answers, though, and what turned out to be the last time I spoke to Phil was on the topic of administration. I had been pestering him for an interview on the record at a time when he had not been feeling well. We’d informally agreed to speak after the weekend but late on Friday night an article appeared on the Daily Mail website that claimed the club was about to hit the wall.
Phil had been poorly and was with his family at a bonfire; so was I. Set against the backdrop of fireworks punctuated by random explosions little did I know the touch paper really had been lit. He promised that no jobs were under immediate threat, administration was not imminent, and that he would release a statement immediately confirming exactly that.
Just a few days later he went to hospital for tests. My interview was shelved and by the time Trevor Birch had been appointed a few weeks later we knew the illness had really taken hold.
His passing leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the decisions that got Wanderers into the position they are in. And in the last few months, that has caused a lot of directionless anger. But I am encouraged by the compassion that has been shown by the fans over the last few days.
One thing I know for sure, my time covering Wanderers would have been much less eventful had it not been for Phil Gartside and I consider myself a better journalist for having worked with him."
http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/14273904.Marc_Iles__Dealing_with_Bolton_Wanderers_chairman_Phil_Gartside_was_difficult_but_eventful/?ref=mr&lp=17
