Refusing to talk then blaming the press for bad PR is a standard fall-back

Blaming journalists is a standard fall-back for people in football when times get rough.

I bet the old “negative press” chestnut has been wheeled out every week since the Sheffield Independent carried a game’s first media mention in 1862. The match between Sheffield FC and Hallam FC was scoreless, by the way, so the report was probably quotes-led.

Sure enough, after finding his voice in recent weeks Wanderers’ former owner Eddie Davies turned the guns on newspapers – ours included – for the way we have reported his efforts to sell the club.

Mr Davies believes the press should be forced to state their sources before printing stories which have cast him in a bad light over the past 12 months. And perhaps he is right.

Here goes: The saga that has brought this famous football club to its knees, sent it packing to League One for the first time in 23 years, landed it in the High Court on no fewer than four occasions and placed it minutes away from liquidation could have all been avoided with a simple bit of communication.

I write that, in case Mr Davies is reading, citing the following sources: 10,000 season ticket holders at the Macron Stadium, a few hundred loyal staff who spent much of the last six months not knowing if they were being paid on time, and thousands more around the town he used to call home.

It seems incredible that a club which has offered so little information to the media or its fans could then complain if their PR is not to their liking.

This is not a failure of the Wanderers’ media department, which has battled incredibly hard to get any information to the public domain at all.

It is certainly not an indictment of the manager, and in particular Neil Lennon, who was starved of information by his own club in the knowledge that he was the public face being scrutinised three or four times a week by the press.

This is a failure of the faceless, those who have made key decisions to get the club to where it is now without answering the questions that followed.

Mr Davies once shook my hand in the tunnel at Portsmouth and I recall Phil Gartside leaning over to tell me: “That’s the closest you’ll ever get to an interview.”

That is the way things worked for years. Gartside was the voice of the boardroom until he too withdrew from the public eye. And I am sorry to say that was long before the sad illness that claimed his life.

Numerous requests to speak with the owner about his complicated and much-discussed financial input were absorbed by the club and – I fear – never actually reached the man himself.

If that is the case then the “rumour” and “downright lies” that Mr Davies complains about should have been corrected by the men and women he employed at ground level. They have my number.

Instead, the club persisted with its policy of saying the bare minimum in times of crisis. And those who suffered most were the supporters left to speculate and feed off the scraps of information that were wrestled from the club’s grasp.

Through this uncertain time it has been difficult to maintain a balance and remember that without Eddie Davies’s assistance, it is highly likely the Premier League glory days and the two UEFA Cup campaigns would not have happened.

We may not have seen Jay Jay Okocha, Youri Djorkaeff, Fernando Hierro, Ivan Campo, or the galaxy of international superstars that lit up Bolton for such a memorable period in its history.

But Bolton Wanderers existed and thrived long before Mr Davies got involved, in fact it was the club he fell in love with as a boy.

It is back to those less glamorous surroundings that the club returns next season – and though the seats in the directors’ box at Scunthorpe United, Rochdale and Fleetwood Town might not be as comfortable as Manchester United, Arsenal or Bayern Munich, the game is no different and results will matter just as much to the supporters.

Dean Holdsworth has already shown a willingness to communicate that bodes well for the future, and thankfully the long-suffering media department are no longer operating under the restrictive shackles they once did. They too may now be able to operate with the creative freedom afforded to their counterparts at other clubs.

It will take some time but things appear to be improving, heck, there was even talk of Mr Davies giving a press conference the other day in his new role as club president.

I’ll be front and centre. I wouldn’t want to miss it.

Source

The bellends already slagging off Holdsworth and co should read the above.

Who knows where the future will take us, but I bet Holdsworth is a lot more open about what happens along the way.

How pathetic.

Davies told the club not to talk to me for the last thirteen years, wah, wah, wah!

Well done just sit there and do nothing about it - why the fuck did you not go out and find the news yourself then man?

It isn't rocket science to know that there is something odd that the 'owner' seems to have invested substantially more than his net worth in the club, that it didn't seem right that 'little old Bolton' were running a debt on a size with Manchester United and Real Madrid, that a judge all but called Gartside unbelievable at a case in which looked into how the club dealt with its transfers, that BBC Panorama more or less called the club corrupt in a national TV documentary and no one (although they made a great deal of bluster about it at the time) never sued them for what they reported, etc, etc!

In those thirteen years he never even seemed to build any informal contacts within the club either and consequently was scooped by Chris Manning and his LoV to Holdsworth take over and has had to follow Manning for tit bits to report.

Christ, even the Holdsworth bid doesn't seem to stack up financially, so what has he done to investigate what their plan is and how robust it actually is?

Little wonder he's blowing smoke up the Supporters Trust arse (a massive 4,000 of the 6,000 pledges not redeemed yet - a staggering nearly 7 in 10 of the people who jumped on board to save the club have jumped back off again following the unconstitutional behaviour of those bandits who tried to take over the club without even holding their own elections first!).

Has Iles even done a story about their behaviour, the people behind it, their unfettered links to the club under the 'evil' Eddie Davies - has he fuck!

Seems to me Iles has become the Jay Spearing of news reporting in that he only does the least amount possible to keep his job and sits on his arse whilst getting paid for the other half of the year.

We have had a basket case club at least since the Panorama report and in all that time Iles has found out fuck all.

You should have got off your arse mate and at least tried to find out things rather than moan Davies would not spoon feed you the news.

No point making out how badly you've been done by, you've been nothing other than Eddie Davies lapdog over the years and had not even realised it.

Seems you have already become Holdsworth and the ST's puppy too!

More fool you.

Now that, kiddies.....is how you have a proper rant.

Well said, Sluff - fully agree with every word and have been saying similar things for years.

Ultimately, not rocking the boat and keeping his cosy job has always been more important to Iles than being a proper journalist.

If I'd been in his shoes, I'd have gone to my editor and said: "Look, I know they've threatened us that if we say anything even slightly negative, they'll cut us off but they're feeding us fuck all anyway, so what's to lose?"

And then I'd have gone to town on Davies, Gartside and the whole rotten lot of them.

The guy's a coward.

Breadman wrote:If I'd been in his shoes, I'd have gone to my editor and said: "Look, I know they've threatened us that if we say anything even slightly negative, they'll cut us off but they're feeding us fuck all anyway, so what's to lose?"
.

And he'd have said "everything".

So you'd have had the choice to toe the line, or fuck off elsewhere to print your BWFC negativity. Only problem with that is that no other publication gives a fook about BWFC.

I think the idea that Iles is whingeing about the way he was treated might ring true if the club was issuing information to others, but they weren't so it's not as if he was being singled out for the silent treatment.
The lack of information given to Iles - or any journalist - is a fair  point IMO.

Natasha Whittam wrote:

Breadman wrote:If I'd been in his shoes, I'd have gone to my editor and said: "Look, I know they've threatened us that if we say anything even slightly negative, they'll cut us off but they're feeding us fuck all anyway, so what's to lose?"
.

And he'd have said "everything".

So you'd have had the choice to toe the line, or fuck off elsewhere to print your BWFC negativity. Only problem with that is that no other publication gives a fook about BWFC.

Utter tripe.

As usual.

So the BN decides to dig its heels in and stop being dictated to by Gartside and Davies and gets banned.

No more invites to Euxton to hear the manager not really say much in a 20 minute press conference on a Friday afternoon.

And no more "exclusive" interviews with whichever "senior pro" drew that week's short straw and subsequently had to come out after (yet another) defeat and try and pretend that they cared.

Big fuckin' deal.....

Would we be any worse off?

No, would we fuck.

But at least the BN's credibility might still be intact instead of it being viewed as just another piece of the machinery that's got us in this fucking mess with its subservient and fawning attitude to the twats who have very nearly killed the club and then sold it down the river to a bunch of cashless spivs.