What was Bolton's biggest mistake since the day Big Sam left?

I was thinking about how it all went wrong for Bolton since the day Big Sam left. It has been just one big joke that has gone on in recent years and it is amazing to me how Gartside still has a job.
So what do you think is Bolton's biggest mistake since that day in 2007 when Big Sam left?

Signing Elmander for £8.2m who had no resale value was a huge mistake IMO, but I think the biggest mistake for me was by Gartside in not sacking Owen Coyle long before he did. Didn't we have a run of something like 21 defeats in 24 games? We were getting battered at home by 7 goals by the top sides. Away from home we were just awful. Owen Coyle has been proved also at Wigan to be a dud. Considering we only went down on goal difference that season, if Coyle had been given the boot in the Autumn we would have definitely stayed up. 

It is sad to see how bad Bolton are now and it needn't have come to this did it?

A tie for me - not firing Mr. Gartside and paying too much attention to what "people in football" think.

Coyle should have gone straight after we were relegated, his past with the club was the only thing that saved him. The rot had set in by then and he should have been man enough to realise he couldn't turn it round.

Appointing Sammy Lee when we could have attracted some quality to the role. Then only backing him to bring in crap like Alonso and Braaten.

About time we moved on from previous  managers...

Hindsight's a wonderful thing. Autumn 2011 wasn't too long after Coyle had us in the top 6 and a cup semi-final playing attractive football. You can understand why the club gave him the benefit of the doubt.
There's no saying we'd have stayed up if we'd sacked him halfway into the season.
A decent tactician would have kept that team up, but there's no guarantee we'd have got one.
We might have sacked him, replaced him with somebody just as useless (they do exist), still gone down and now be saying we got rid too soon.

It's hard to choose a "biggest mistake", it's just been a series of monumental strategic errors, some that seemed clever at the time, some that didn't make sense to begin with.

Allardyce bailed out because he knew the money would never be enough and would have to be paid off some day and he had no succession plan for an ageing team. He knew his plan was falling down around his ears and that the only way to save his reputation was to buy a new team or leave- so he left. Continuing to throw money at the team to try to patch it up and keep up appearances was a mistake and the Board should have been honest with themselves and the fans then and cleared out the cupboard instead of letting the problem fester until now when the position is far worse.

Anelka, Diouf, SKD, Nolan, Dzemaili, Faye, Al Habsi - All of them under 30 and under contract when Allardyce left us. He left us with a good squad and it was squandered.

bwfc1874 wrote:Anelka, Diouf, SKD, Nolan, Dzemaili, Faye, Al Habsi - All of them under 30 and under contract when Allardyce left us. He left us with a good squad and it was squandered.

List the full squad then tell me you're not stretching the point 

My point was, it wasn't a squad beyond repair by any means, I think you're exaggerating the decline it was in.

wanderlust wrote:Allardyce bailed out because he knew the money would never be enough and would have to be paid off some day and he had no succession plan for an ageing team. He knew his plan was falling down around his ears and that the only way to save his reputation was to buy a new team or leave- so he left. Continuing to throw money at the team to try to patch it up and keep up appearances was a mistake and the Board should have been honest with themselves and the fans then and cleared out the cupboard instead of letting the problem fester until now when the position is far worse.

Allardyce bailed out because Gartside and the board wouldnt back him to take us onto another level,he took us on a wonderful journey most of us never thought possible. He had a fantastic tenure as boss and I for one will be forever grateful for it. The players we were lucky to witness came to the club because of him and him alone,the man had presence and ability and we were the lucky ones that benefitted from that.

The biggest mistake was getting relegated - we've lost absolutely millions because of that.

The team that got relegated under performed badly - worst home record in the clubs history and we had players like Davies - who had recently been good enough to play for England, Klasnic, Petrov, Jussi, Reo-Coker (who was the clubs player of the year that season), Lee, Eagles, Wheater, Mark Davies, Alonso, etc.

Can anyone honestly tell me that team wasn't good enough to stay up with an half decent manager in charge?

Instead we had Coyle playing the same sytem week in and week out and getting beaten every time.

Thank you Owen for your master class in tactics.

Wanderlust r u mad BSA gave us 4 seasons of top 8 finishes 8th,2 7ths and a 6 th.BSA could have took us to the Champions Leauge.Gartside bottled it when asked for money.Yet Megson was given Carte Blanche to buy buy buy.
When Sam A left us we were in very little debt.As a Wanderers fan I saw us play in the Allianz Arena,the best stadium in the world IMO,for atmosphere,brilliant design and we got a 2-2 v a Bayern side that had this years Germany captain playing Philip Lahm,Schweinsteiger,Podolski,Luca Toni ( Italian international)franc Ribery ,Oliver Khan then Germany's international keeper.BSA brought some of the finest players to grace the Reebok,regularly turning Arsenal over.
I also agree with Sluffy after beating Blackburn December 20 th 2011 2-1 at Ewood,he lost us vital points v Newcastle and Norwich by changing 4-5-1 to 4-4-2 both scores at 0-0 when he went 4-4-2.
A few days later we beat Liverpool 3-1.

His subsituation at 2-0 v WBA bringing on CYL instead of an extra defender or midfielder was bordering on insanity as Lee had not played all season. Gartside should have gone with Coyle plus in my opinion he looks like a creepy paedo.Always sweating Fat Fuck.

Difficult to choose between appointing Sammy Lee and not sacking Coyle sooner. As Sluffy says how Coyle managed to get us relegated is hard to believe - although if we had stayed up he would have got us relegated the following season.

Darkside should have been binned as soon as BSA went, he just installed one piss poor manager after another, he is the biggest cancer at BWFC IMO!!!!!!

The reason why I don't think the sun shines out of Allardyce's arse was this:

It was brilliant whilst it lasted but our flirtation with the top of the premiership and Europe came at a price and Sam knew it. The (increased) money we received from that should have produced a massive profit - after all, if you can't make a profit when your getting top dollar from TV and the prem and the fan base is the highest it's been in donkeys years there's something wrong.

That profit could have been invested in infrastructure and a top class development academy  at the club so that the team would be supplied with premiership quality players and remain debt free for years to come - it was our big chance to permanently secure the top flight future of BWFC.
But he made a loss. Not as big a loss as later managers who were burdened with loan repayments on Allardyce's loss, the need to replace the squad and to put a proper youth structure in place - but a loss - at a time when we should have rolling in profit.

Allardyce implied in the media that BWFC were being tight by not giving him the money for a handful of players to push the team into the top 4 which if true would be seen as tight. 
But he needed enough money to buy around 10 players - because he'd made no provision for the times that lay ahead - and the only players he could get had a low purchase to resale value ratio. 
He knew that there would be no return on the money he'd already spent - who would want to pay out to sign the likes of Campo and Okocha at their age? 

IMO Allardyce blew our best chance of securing our future because he was lapping up the adulation of the fans and the media rather than using the money wisely. He knew the well was dry so he left us for the Geordie shekels where he saw an owner in Mike Ashley who looked gullible and desperate enough to throw money at the problem.
Ever since then, Allardyce has shown that his main and possibly only talent is to sweet talk quality players to come to a club and occasionally he gets lucky, but there's always money thrown at it and no evidence of financial prudence or saving for a rainy day. Andy Carroll FFS.

He left a poisoned chalice. Subsequent managers had the task of rebuilding the squad on less money whilst being burdened by the debt Allardyce had already created.

We should have been in the black. We should have had all the requisite development structures in place at the club. Boring I know, and we probably would have been a mid table premiership club for years whilst it all got bedded down.
But we'd still be in the premiership, debt-free and with a solid foundation to build upon.

The glory days were great, but I'd have settled for 10 years of mediocrity if I'd known we'd emerge stronger for it. We'll never know how many glory days Allardyce's profligacy cost us.

There was never a better chance to bank the money and build, but Allardyce blew it.

Subsequent managers haven't been great but they were always going to be up against it, not only financially, but because they had no youth of the right quality to work with, and they'd always be compared with the success that Allardyce brought (or bought) and so had the fans on their backs from the start. 

And fans tend not to care about the price of success - or even think of the football club as a business. It's all about immediate gratification.

When you're making loads of money and living the high life, not everyone thinks about putting some away for the future or investing in things that will pay long-term dividends. 

Boring perspective for sure, but nobody can say where we'd be now if Allardyce had managed the money better when our income was sky high. I suspect mid table Premiership and debt free.

There's a second reason why I think Allardyce used our club for self-promotion and sold us out when there was no money left to give him. He said as much to to a guy I know who was playing golf with him.
Therefore he is a traitor and an asshole in my opinion.

Appointing Sammy Lee. Simple as that. Knee jerk appointment. Set us down the path that we find ourselves on to this day. 

huge huge mistake by Gartside and the others involved.

wanderlust wrote:The reason why I don't think the sun shines out of Allardyce's arse was this:

It was brilliant whilst it lasted but our flirtation with the top of the premiership and Europe came at a price and Sam knew it. The (increased) money we received from that should have produced a massive profit - after all, if you can't make a profit when your getting top dollar from TV and the prem and the fan base is the highest it's been in donkeys years there's something wrong.

That profit could have been invested in infrastructure and a top class development academy  at the club so that the team would be supplied with premiership quality players and remain debt free for years to come - it was our big chance to permanently secure the top flight future of BWFC.
But he made a loss. Not as big a loss as later managers who were burdened with loan repayments on Allardyce's loss, the need to replace the squad and to put a proper youth structure in place - but a loss - at a time when we should have rolling in profit.

Allardyce implied in the media that BWFC were being tight by not giving him the money for a handful of players to push the team into the top 4 which if true would be seen as tight. 
But he needed enough money to buy around 10 players - because he'd made no provision for the times that lay ahead - and the only players he could get had a low purchase to resale value ratio. 
He knew that there would be no return on the money he'd already spent - who would want to pay out to sign the likes of Campo and Okocha at their age? 

IMO Allardyce blew our best chance of securing our future because he was lapping up the adulation of the fans and the media rather than using the money wisely. He knew the well was dry so he left us for the Geordie shekels where he saw an owner in Mike Ashley who looked gullible and desperate enough to throw money at the problem.
Ever since then, Allardyce has shown that his main and possibly only talent is to sweet talk quality players to come to a club and occasionally he gets lucky, but there's always money thrown at it and no evidence of financial prudence or saving for a rainy day. Andy Carroll FFS.

He left a poisoned chalice. Subsequent managers had the task of rebuilding the squad on less money whilst being burdened by the debt Allardyce had already created.

We should have been in the black. We should have had all the requisite development structures in place at the club. Boring I know, and we probably would have been a mid table premiership club for years whilst it all got bedded down.
But we'd still be in the premiership, debt-free and with a solid foundation to build upon.

The glory days were great, but I'd have settled for 10 years of mediocrity if I'd known we'd emerge stronger for it. We'll never know how many glory days Allardyce's profligacy cost us.

There was never a better chance to bank the money and build, but Allardyce blew it.

Subsequent managers haven't been great but they were always going to be up against it, not only financially, but because they had no youth of the right quality to work with, and they'd always be compared with the success that Allardyce brought (or bought) and so had the fans on their backs from the start. 

And fans tend not to care about the price of success - or even think of the football club as a business. It's all about immediate gratification.

When you're making loads of money and living the high life, not everyone thinks about putting some away for the future or investing in things that will pay long-term dividends. 

Boring perspective for sure, but nobody can say where we'd be now if Allardyce had managed the money better when our income was sky high. I suspect mid table Premiership and debt free.

There's a second reason why I think Allardyce used our club for self-promotion and sold us out when there was no money left to give him. He said as much to to a guy I know who was playing golf with him.
Therefore he is a traitor and an asshole in my opinion.

All that based on your assumption Sam had control of the purse strings. The club was doing fine financially during his tenure and on the day he left. You blame him for what happened after the event.
If you think he should have been given the money to rebuild and the amount to be given was good enough to do what you would have wanted say so. Sam wanted x amount to do what his submission stated. He was offered what and what was open to negotiation.

The club should have been doing a lot better than "fine" under his tenure Carrs - several top 8 finishes, Europa league, SKY money, bigger crowds, more shirts and memorabilia sold then ever before....
So where did the money go?
And how come there was a loss? Any loss?
I could understand it if we'd bought the best 20 kids in the World ready to take over when the aging stars were done, but Allardyce blew it faster than it was coming in.

The debt rose further under Megson but that's at least partially because income was less, there were trading losses on players Allardyce brought in who had no/low resale value and Allardyce's debt had to be serviced. 

You make assumptions about the money and Gartside based on what Allardyce claimed in the media - and given that we know he is a liar those assumptions have to be questioned.

What we also know is that the day he left there was no contingency plan in place and a burden of debt to be repaid before we could even think of rebuilding. The guy shafted us and then had the cheek to make himself out to be some kind of hero.

Income less under Megson? I doubt it was significantly. The main income is TV money and that didn't go down at any point.

I think you're blaming Allardyce for the financial situation, when it's up to the board to dictate how money is invested and spent - very poorly in our case.