Ken Anderson - Old Owner (Definitely. For Ever ..... )

[BWFC_Insane]

The problem with transparency and openness is it comes back to bite you when things change. Ken's words that "Clough and Vela won't be sold off, unless a huge bid comes in from a premiership club" will mean that he'll probably never be trusted by many fans.

I can understand why things changed, as when he said that he thought he was bringing in further investment. But the blumarble legal thing means the club have to find money to cover the wages till the end of the season or whenever blumarble is resolved. Given that is at least half a million a month....one can't be surprised.

But that highlights the issue with being "open". Eventually it comes back to bite you.

[Hoboh]

The problem with transparency and openness is it comes back to bite you when things change. Ken's words that "Clough and Vela won't be sold off, unless a huge bid comes in from a premiership club" will mean that he'll probably never be trusted by many fans.

I can understand why things changed, as when he said that he thought he was bringing in further investment. But the blumarble legal thing means the club have to find money to cover the wages till the end of the season or whenever blumarble is resolved. Given that is at least half a million a month....one can't be surprised.

But that highlights the issue with being "open". Eventually it comes back to bite you.

Nothing to do with being 'open', more like you should have had the clubs accounts and deals inspected properly before buying.

Just makes you wonder why the last owner was prepared to go to the wire, so as not to give any prospective new owner enough time to go through everything?

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

The latest missive on the official site:

It turned out to be another busy transfer window for the football club and I would like to welcome our new signings Adam Le Fondre, Chris Long and Viv Solomon-Otabor who have all arrived on loan until the end of the season.

Wanderers fans will need no introduction to Adam who enjoyed a very fruitful loan spell at Macron Stadium two years ago, while Chris and Viv are two young, exciting forward players who will give us some good varied options up front.

We believe the new signings will freshen things up as we look to get back on track in our quest for promotion.

We said goodbye to Zach Clough who joined Championship side Nottingham Forest. It was a very tough decision to let Zach go, especially as he had been at the club since a very young age.

We received several bids for him and we held out to get the best offer we could for him. The deal helps us out from a financial point of view during what is a very challenging time and we didn’t want to stand in his way.

Everybody at the club would like to thank him for serving Bolton Wanderers with such distinction and we wish him well for the future.

Jamie Proctor and Chris Taylor weren’t getting into the first team, and we allowed them to move out on loan to other clubs. The spells away will hopefully give them regular action which will serve them well when they return in the summer.

We had a bid turned down for a defender whose club didn’t want him to join a rival and we knocked back several enquiries for some of our other players.

But we have kept the bulk of our squad intact and now we are actively looking to bring in some free agents to further enhance the team with the two available slots open to us.

The lads are back in action this Saturday with a tough trip to MK Dons, but with your continued support, which has been a great constant this season, we will put up a good fight.

Let’s be loud, let’s be proud and let’s get behind the boys.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Cheers DSB - I might be popping over to MK for the match since it's down my end so I'll post in the match thread with my views on performances and if any of our newcomers make an appearance.

No problem. Please do so. I was going to go originally but something came up that night; I'd be interested to hear how the fans "feel", too.

Weren't MK Dons giving tickets away to locals, as part of the city's 50th birthday celebrations or summat? Might be a fair few there.

[Prufrock]

F*cking McDons too next? Can't face losing to them. Let's have some cheer. Feels donkeys' since I was bouncing up and down at Henry's winner against Scunthorpe.

[BWFC_Insane]

BBC Radio Manchester has tweeted the following....

Liam Bradford ‏@LiamBradford84 41m41 minutes ago
£2.5m for Clough covers #BWFC's losses for 3 months. Terrifying. Sell arguably your best player and it covers your losses for only 3 months.

If true.....

[Tombwfc]

I should imagine that's based on us losing £800k a month, which Ken said at the start of December. Given that was back when he was also saying we didn't have to sell, things have probably gotten worse since.

[BWFC_Insane]

I should imagine that's based on us losing £800k a month, which Ken said at the start of December. Given that was back when he was also saying we didn't have to sell, things have probably gotten worse since.

The losses won't have got worse. I think the only thing that has changed is that Ken was back then, expecting to be able to bring in investment immediately to fund the club, once he'd bought out DH. But the fact that isn't going to happen any time soon, I assume is what led to the need to raise some "bridging funds". This whole thing raises several questions about the takeover and what money was in fact made available...though possibly for another time.

[Tails07]

I should imagine that's based on us losing £800k a month, which Ken said at the start of December. Given that was back when he was also saying we didn't have to sell, things have probably gotten worse since.

The losses won't have got worse. I think the only thing that has changed is that Ken was back then, expecting to be able to bring in investment immediately to fund the club, once he'd bought out DH. But the fact that isn't going to happen any time soon, I assume is what led to the need to raise some "bridging funds". This whole thing raises several questions about the takeover and what money was in fact made available...though possibly for another time.

I'm sure I read somewhere that it was now down to 500k a month so based on that Clough's fee should pay that for the next 5 months which by then we can slash the wage bill once some the contracts run out in June. There are a still a lot of unpaid other contracts coming out the woodwork like the 200k owed to Heathcote so maybe the Clough fee isn't enough to tide us over, hope he has plenty of apperance fees and goal fees written into that contract!

[Tombwfc]

Ken's back for more...

There have been some comments on social media sites and in the press about the sale of Zach Clough last Tuesday, which are fully justified and are only to be expected bearing in mind my previous comments about him and Josh Vela.

As previously stated, I am having to make some very difficult and unpleasant decisions to try and achieve a sustainable business plan for the club and hotel going forward.

Obviously, like everyone else, I was extremely disappointed to see Zach leave, but Nottingham Forest were very persistent in their pursuit of him and after rejecting their initial approaches, the ever increasing sums of money being offered to both Zach and the club, I had to weigh up the financial benefits for the club of selling him and regrettably, following Dean’s refusal last week to contribute any funds to financially support the club, alongside me, I was left with no alternative but to try and reach the best deal possible with Forest.

Over a number of calls and many hours of negotiations to ensure that we got a substantial portion of the fee paid immediately with further bonuses and a future sell on fee, I reluctantly agreed for Zach, his father and agent to meet with them.

I would mention that despite all the comments made by people who have no knowledge of what the fee was, or how we were selling off the 'crown jewels ' Forest were the only club who made an offer.

Furthermore, at no time did Zach ever put any pressure on the manager, or me personally, to let him leave. However, Zach's departure has greatly helped the club’s current financial position and also gave us the ability to freshen up the squad and bring in a number of players which also gives us other options, in the style of play, we now have and hopefully will help us achieve our target of promotion this season.

We all have a great deal to thank Zach for, both on and off the field, and I feel sure, like me, you wish him all the best for the future.

The accounts for 2015 – a period covering the year prior to Dean and my involvement with the club – were filed on Tuesday. I would like to draw your attention to the notes to the accounts which refer to the post balance sheet events. I will explain these in more detail in due course.

As I have previously mentioned, my aim this season is to try and get promotion back to the Championship but, at the same time, to try to achieve a fully funded, sustainable business plan which will ensure the future of the club going forward.

Unfortunately, this entails me making decisions that, as I already have said, may be unpleasant and continuing to look at our cost base and in particular, review long term existing contracts that are not commercially favourable to the club, with the likes of Macron, Heathcote & Co, energy suppliers, several agents and professional advisors.

As I have said in the past, our actions to date have already saved the club hundreds of thousands of pounds, but I am hopeful we can increase this to several millions, which will go a long way to securing the club’s future. As they say though, 'Rome was not built in a day'.

We have also suffered both on and off the field this season with several of our 'big hitter' players being not available through season-long injuries.

The financial cost of this to the club has been circa £4m. To put this in to perspective, the Premier League last week released an article on the cost of injured players to Premier League clubs and we would have ranked in the top 10 - something hopefully which we can avoid going forward. Please feel free to read that article by CLICKING HERE.

Suzanne Speak and her team are continuing to work tirelessly to help drive revenue for the hotel despite the challenging circumstances. The versatility of our venue will be superbly showcased with plenty of events lined up over the coming months.

TV stars from a popular soap opera will be in the Premier Suite for the ‘Dancing With The Dales’ charity event on May 5, while also in May there will be ‘An Evening With Anthony Joshua’ dinner.

With other events including an ‘80s music night and a White Collar Boxing tournament, make sure you follow Bolton Whites on their various social media channels (Twitter @BoltonWhitesHtl and Facebook/BoltonWhitesHotel) to keep up to date with what is taking place here at Macron Stadium.

As has been well reported, at the end of the season, we will have a number of players whose contracts come to an end, which will enable us to renegotiate and also bring in a new batch of players on a more sustainable cost basis.

Our budget this season, at circa £10m, is amongst the highest in Sky Bet League One and indeed the Championship, and it is imperative that going forward, we control our squad budget and work within a framework that is financially sustainable.

We are currently in discussions with the council about the level of rates that we as a business are paying, which is circa half a million pounds per annum for the hotel and almost a million pounds for the stadium in 2017 – each more than double that of other local hotels and football stadia of a comparable size.

If we are successful with these negotiations, we could save several millions of pounds from previous, current and future payments. This alone would go a long way to securing our aim of a sustainable business plan. I hope the press and supporters will get behind us on this quest.

The biggest challenge of all will be reaching a solution with Blu Marble and Sports Shield which could, in my opinion, save us several millions of pounds, but this is likely to go to litigation and unfortunately, may take several years to finalise.

For the record, I would also like to mention that I took no part in the original discussions with Blu Marble. Furthermore, the club does not have an agreement with Blu Marble; it has an agreement with Sports Shield and I am currently disputing the validity of this.

We are extremely fortunate and grateful for the support and patience we have had and are continuing to receive from our trading partners, which is essential to the future of the club.

The support of our season ticket holders and all our supporters has not only helped us on and off the field to date, but will continue to play a major part in us trying to achieve promotion this season.

I am delighted meanwhile to have accepted an invitation to be a guest at the Bolton Wanderers Supporters Association event on March 1. Please visit http://www.mybwsa.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for more information about the evening and how to become a member if you aren’t one already.

Please continue to support us and encourage your friends, family and colleagues to come along and get behind us, starting this Saturday for our game against Walsall, which is closely followed by our neighbours Rochdale on Tuesday evening.

As always, let’s be loud, let’s be proud and let’s get behind the boys.

Kind regards,

Ken

Or if you can't be bothered to read all that, the long and the short of it is it's all Deano's fault.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Or if you can't be bothered to read all that, the long and the short of it is it's all Deano's fault.

Was just going to summarise precisely thus.

Some interesting stuff about debts, costs, fiscal clusterf*ckery. Ominous mention of "several years" to dissolve the Blu Marble / Sports Shield involvement.

[BWFC_Insane]

Aye. We're in transfer embargo for several years. Super.

[KeyserSoze]

The financial cost of this to the club has been circa £4m. To put this in to perspective, the Premier League last week released an article on the cost of injured players to Premier League clubs and we would have ranked in the top 10 - something hopefully which we can avoid going forward.

[BWFC_Insane]

Read Iles' tweets this morning. Think the man has turned on the owners. Sounds thoroughly fed up.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Cheers DSB - I might be popping over to MK for the match since it's down my end so I'll post in the match thread with my views on performances and if any of our newcomers make an appearance.

No problem. Please do so.

Posted my thoughts but I think they got lost in the noise.

tl;dr: Draw fair result; both teams were crap; Moxey is terrible; still poor going forwards; new signings look good but jury is still out.

No, I saw it (link here). Cheers – and keep coming back, with your unbeaten record...

[twilight]

Oh dear....seems Dean Holdsworth has reacted to KA's speech

[Peter Thompson]

Holdsworth's response / statement will cause (IMO) all out war in the boardroom.

This will without doubt end up in court....

[BWFC_Insane]

Deano alleges that Ken has put money into the club and then taken it back out again.

Effectively he is saying Ken isn't contributing what he claimed to be.

This is a total and utter mess. Make no bones about it this is complete crisis.

This will likely derail our promotion bid. And the future looks very bleak indeed. It needed a quick resolution but clearly that isn't happening now.

Wouldn't be surprised if Parky walked come end of season. Wouldn't blame him either. He's far better than this.

[BWFC_Insane]

Holdsworth's response / statement will cause (IMO) all out war in the boardroom.

This will without doubt end up in court....

There has been all out war in the boardroom from month one. I did tell you this at the time but you claimed it was all made up bullshit.....

[officer_dibble]

Link to holdsworths statement?
Sigh...

Edit
Seen it now

Open warfare between our two directors. Awesome.