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

White84 wrote:Well wander we are in a great position nowSstruggling in the Championship for two seasons,worst start for 100 years last season.
Success on the pitch does not automatically mean financial success.When BSA left we were fairly even yet you blame our decline on him.
Anyway your entitled to your opinion.As it happens Europa leauge money is not that much compared with CL money.I think we were under 10 million in debt when he left still had Nolan,Anelka,Diouf,Stelios,SKD,Jussi just off the top of my head. At least we beat Port Vale 2-1.

comawhite wrote:I can't believe no-one has really mentioned the appointment of Megson. Sure Sammy Lee was a dud, but at the time it looked to be a good appointment, he had top level experience and knew the set up of the squad. Megson on the other hand was never a well received appointment, and he single handedly destroyed everything Sam had built. Yes Sam had a fairly ageing team (although plenty of them are still plying their trade in the premier league with West Ham) but the sports science he brought it enabled him to get the very best perfomances from the players. I nearly cried when Megson announced that he had ripped out all the facilities and gone back to basics, even changing slogans on the training ground walls if I recall. The worse thing was he announced it like he was a genius! Maybe he stabled the ship a little but at what cost? And could a better manager have done the same or have kept us up. I suppose we will never know.

Oh, and we also ended up paying out for him while he was on gardening leave.

Appointing Megson was definitely the biggest mistake since Big Sam left in my opinion.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:

comawhite wrote:I can't believe no-one has really mentioned the appointment of Megson. Sure Sammy Lee was a dud, but at the time it looked to be a good appointment, he had top level experience and knew the set up of the squad. Megson on the other hand was never a well received appointment, and he single handedly destroyed everything Sam had built. Yes Sam had a fairly ageing team (although plenty of them are still plying their trade in the premier league with West Ham) but the sports science he brought it enabled him to get the very best perfomances from the players. I nearly cried when Megson announced that he had ripped out all the facilities and gone back to basics, even changing slogans on the training ground walls if I recall. The worse thing was he announced it like he was a genius! Maybe he stabled the ship a little but at what cost? And could a better manager have done the same or have kept us up. I suppose we will never know.

Oh, and we also ended up paying out for him while he was on gardening leave.

Appointing Megson was definitely the biggest mistake since Big Sam left in my opinion.

To who? Sammy Lee had absolutely no respect from the players what so ever, that was made clear when they went over his head after he dropped Campo and Nolan. He also had no experience at all btw. 

not to mention SL bought some of the worst players to wear the shirt.

White84 wrote: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.

MartinBWFC wrote:

Hipster_Nebula wrote:

comawhite wrote:I can't believe no-one has really mentioned the appointment of Megson. Sure Sammy Lee was a dud, but at the time it looked to be a good appointment, he had top level experience and knew the set up of the squad. Megson on the other hand was never a well received appointment, and he single handedly destroyed everything Sam had built. Yes Sam had a fairly ageing team (although plenty of them are still plying their trade in the premier league with West Ham) but the sports science he brought it enabled him to get the very best perfomances from the players. I nearly cried when Megson announced that he had ripped out all the facilities and gone back to basics, even changing slogans on the training ground walls if I recall. The worse thing was he announced it like he was a genius! Maybe he stabled the ship a little but at what cost? And could a better manager have done the same or have kept us up. I suppose we will never know.

Oh, and we also ended up paying out for him while he was on gardening leave.

Appointing Megson was definitely the biggest mistake since Big Sam left in my opinion.

To who? Sammy Lee had absolutely no respect from the players what so ever, that was made clear when they went over his head after he dropped Campo and Nolan. He also had no experience at all btw. 

not to mention SL bought some of the worst players to wear the shirt.

Go on then I'll play, who did SL bring in that were worse than say Robinson, Elmander et al ?

wanderlust wrote:

White84 wrote:Well wander we are in a great position nowSstruggling in the Championship for two seasons,worst start for 100 years last season.
Success on the pitch does not automatically mean financial success.When BSA left we were fairly even yet you blame our decline on him.
Anyway your entitled to your opinion.As it happens Europa leauge money is not that much compared with CL money.I think we were under 10 million in debt when he left still had Nolan,Anelka,Diouf,Stelios,SKD,Jussi just off the top of my head. At least we beat Port Vale 2-1.

Just saying that Fat Sam has to carry some of the blame and I don't believe his self-publicist hype, especially as in private he laughs at what he did to us. There will always be Wanderers fans who like Allardyce and believe the hype that surrounds him (well more than Blackburn, Newcastle and West Ham fans anyway) so we'll have to agree to disagree about the fat ****.

Since he left our managers have floundered around trying to recover the situation and a combination of bad judgement, bad decisions and bad luck have brought us to this current position.
Can't pinpoint one mistake or moment as there have been many.
If forced to decide I'd agree with Sluffy that the team that got relegated should have done better especially as we got relegated by the narrowest of margins - their attitude sucked and Block 39 Seat 955 South Stand Row 2 in the Britannia Stadium was the worst place in the world to be on Sunday 13th May 2012 when they finally capitulated and I'll never forgive them for that memory.

But equally we could point to bad luck and key injuries especially Holden who I think may have made a difference.

You point to our current predicament but at least we finally have a manager who is under no pressure to emulate those glory days in the short term, has stopped the flood of money going out of the club, and has finally introduced a sense of realism to the fans - something that has been missing throughout the Megson and Coyle eras. BN and media still deluded though.

Now that we're finally waking up and smelling the coffee then maybe there's a chance we can steady the ship and start rebuilding from here. And that's a good thing after years of throwing good money after bad.

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.

comawhite wrote:I can't believe no-one has really mentioned the appointment of Megson. Sure Sammy Lee was a dud, but at the time it looked to be a good appointment, he had top level experience and knew the set up of the squad. Megson on the other hand was never a well received appointment, and he single handedly destroyed everything Sam had built. Yes Sam had a fairly ageing team (although plenty of them are still plying their trade in the premier league with West Ham) but the sports science he brought it enabled him to get the very best perfomances from the players. I nearly cried when Megson announced that he had ripped out all the facilities and gone back to basics, even changing slogans on the training ground walls if I recall. The worse thing was he announced it like he was a genius! Maybe he stabled the ship a little but at what cost? And could a better manager have done the same or have kept us up. I suppose we will never know.

Oh, and we also ended up paying out for him while he was on gardening leave.

Appointing Megson was definitely the biggest mistake since Big Sam left in my opinion.

Tigermin wrote:

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.

Fuckoff !!!! 

bryan458 wrote: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!!!!!!

doffcocker wrote:

comawhite wrote:I can't believe no-one has really mentioned the appointment of Megson. Sure Sammy Lee was a dud, but at the time it looked to be a good appointment, he had top level experience and knew the set up of the squad. Megson on the other hand was never a well received appointment, and he single handedly destroyed everything Sam had built. Yes Sam had a fairly ageing team (although plenty of them are still plying their trade in the premier league with West Ham) but the sports science he brought it enabled him to get the very best perfomances from the players. I nearly cried when Megson announced that he had ripped out all the facilities and gone back to basics, even changing slogans on the training ground walls if I recall. The worse thing was he announced it like he was a genius! Maybe he stabled the ship a little but at what cost? And could a better manager have done the same or have kept us up. I suppose we will never know.

Oh, and we also ended up paying out for him while he was on gardening leave.

Appointing Megson was definitely the biggest mistake since Big Sam left in my opinion.

Top post.

Bolton fans have got short memories when it comes to Gary Megson.

It was Coyle that took us down in the end, but it was always going that way under Megson.

As for Sammy Lee, he made a few crap signings and turned us into a shambles for 10 or so matches, but hardly set us back years, although I'm sure it would have gone that way had he not been sacked when he was.

JAH wrote:

doffcocker wrote:

comawhite wrote:I can't believe no-one has really mentioned the appointment of Megson. Sure Sammy Lee was a dud, but at the time it looked to be a good appointment, he had top level experience and knew the set up of the squad. Megson on the other hand was never a well received appointment, and he single handedly destroyed everything Sam had built. Yes Sam had a fairly ageing team (although plenty of them are still plying their trade in the premier league with West Ham) but the sports science he brought it enabled him to get the very best perfomances from the players. I nearly cried when Megson announced that he had ripped out all the facilities and gone back to basics, even changing slogans on the training ground walls if I recall. The worse thing was he announced it like he was a genius! Maybe he stabled the ship a little but at what cost? And could a better manager have done the same or have kept us up. I suppose we will never know.

Oh, and we also ended up paying out for him while he was on gardening leave.

Appointing Megson was definitely the biggest mistake since Big Sam left in my opinion.

Top post.

Bolton fans have got short memories when it comes to Gary Megson.

It was Coyle that took us down in the end, but it was always going that way under Megson.

As for Sammy Lee, he made a few crap signings and turned us into a shambles for 10 or so matches, but hardly set us back years, although I'm sure it would have gone that way had he not been sacked when he was.

Couldn't agree more with these 2 posts. Megson was a cancer on our club turning fans against each other and poisoning the club! Sammy Lee was a gamble that failed. Owen Coyle saved us from relegation in his first season and actually had us playing some decent football, but had some of the worst luck I have ever known a manager to face! However as someone eluded to earlier probably didn't get fired early enough which might have saved us from the drop.

No bwfc biggest mistake was appointing that horrible ginger git and I will never forgot the day I heard he'd finally been sacked!