History was
always my favourite subject. The past and how it brought us to where we are
now, has always fascinated me. It still does, even allowing for the fact I’m
old enough to be part of history. As
proof of this, I take as my text the content of my son’s dissertation for his
MA in Modern British Social History; a
Situationist analysis of Factory Records’ importance to the cultural and economic
life of Manchester between 1980 and 1992. Putting things in context, that
span of time took me from doing my O Levels to getting married. It was very
different in my schooldays. I was taught via a strict and inflexible adherence
to the pedagogically discredited methodology of a minute focus on chronological
lists of kings, battles and conquests. Take for instance the British History
aspect of my A Level syllabus. It covered the period 1868 to 1951; from
Gladstone’s first administration to the defeat of Attlee’s post-war Labour
Government. We’ll draw a veil over the latter event, shall we?
Now William Ewart
Gladstone was an appallingly pompous, small-minded, dull little man, who just
happened to be a fairly progressive social reformer in the context of the times
in which he lived. He took most of his ideological inspiration from the Good
Book, but the rest of it came from his annual summer holidays, which were spent
cruising the fjords of Norway. You see Gladstone, clearly eschewing the
messages relayed by the plays of Henrik Ibsen, felt that Norway, whilst not
being quite an earthly paradise, was pretty much the ideal version of the small
nation state; economically prosperous, socially cohesive, politically stable
and in state of peaceful co-existence with her neighbours. Gladstone viewed
Norway as the country to model Ireland upon and sought to “pacify” the Home Rule
movement by sharing his devotion to such ideas which, bearing in mind
subsequent developments, probably explains why Gladstone is more fondly
remembered for a style of holdall favoured by medics than his political ideals.
However, and you
need to hear me out on this, the concept of Gladstone’s Norway seemed to have
been revived in an unfashionable corner of Lancashire from the early to mid-1990s
onwards. Bearing in mind the seemingly unending fiasco of failed takeover bids
and flirtations with administration, it seems a scarcely credible thing to
suggest, but Bolton Wanderers were held up as a shining example of a modest
club punching well above their weight among the game’s behemoths. They were a
club who drew praise across the whole spectrum of football analysts. In short,
The Trotters were Gladstone’s Norway in Reeboks. Sadly, Bolton have declined
from the romance of their vie en rose
to the demotic drudgery of a second relegation to League 1 in 3 seasons. The
last few years have seen their fortunes crumble into ashes in a way eerily
reminiscent of the stalled careers of the town’s most famous sons. Stu Francis,
Damon Gough, Amir Khan, Tony Knowles, Ralf Little and Paddy McGuinness, not
forgetting Vernon and Peter Kay; that joke isn’t funny anymore…
The first time I
visited Burnden Park was all the way back in August 1982; it was Kevin Keegan’s
second game for Newcastle United, and we won 2-1. After that season, NUFC and
Bolton’s fortunes diverged to the extent that I didn’t get back there until our
next visit, in August 1995, when we won 3-1. The antiquated ground seemed
almost unchanged, except for the construction of a supermarket that appeared to
have been plonked in the middle of the away end for no other reason than to
reduce the capacity. Of course, Bolton had taken steps to reduce their debt by
selling off this piece of land as, having made the decision to appoint Phil
Neal as manager in 1983, they’d spent 9 years kicking around the bottom 2
divisions in front of about 3,000 diehards.
Things began to
change for the better in summer 1992 when Bruce Rioch, fresh from recent P45s
at Middlesbrough and Millwall, emerged as something of an unlikely folk hero
when he took on the manager’s job. Rioch is viewed now as something of an
anachronism; a crew cut, Scottish sergeant major with a cut glass English
accent and a reputation for an almost Calvinistic devotion to hard graft.
However, he got the Trotters playing some sparkling football. The first green
shoots were seen in a 2-0 FA Cup win at Anfield in January 1993, when they
knocked out the holders in a replay. Inspired by this night of glory, the side
went on a strong run of form and won promotion back to the second tier for the
first time in a decade at the end of that season. After a year’s consolidation,
Bolton won promotion to the top flight after an almost forgotten Wembley
classic; their eye-catching side containing John McGinlay, Andy Walker, David
Lee, Jason MacAteer and Alan Stubbs, came back from 2-0 to beat Reading 4-3 in
the play-off final, making up for the disappointment of a League Cup final
defeat to Liverpool two months earlier.
Sadly, their
debut campaign in the Premier League ended in relegation. Rioch, still dripping
in celebratory champers, went to manage Arsenal before May was out, while McAteer
was sold to Liverpool and Stubbs to Everton. New boss Colin Todd tried his best
and had them playing decent football, but the squad was out of their depth.
There was some good news though; antiquated Burnden Park would be replaced by
the state-of-the-art Reebok Stadium. By the time it opened in 1997, Todd had
guided Bolton back to the Premier League, though they were again relegated in
summer 1998. He took them to the play-off final in 1999 but resigned after
losing 2-0 to Watford. Todd’s departure ushered in the era that defined the
modern Bolton Wanderers in the eyes of most football supporters; the reign of
Sam Allardyce.
While the popular
opinion regarding the hippo headed, Bisto
and Chardonnay snakebite quaffing, boor is one of contempt verging on
revulsion, it has to be noted that having recently taken Notts County up from
the bottom tier with a record points total, the chain-smoking, moustachioed
pre-millennium edition Allardyce was genuinely seen as an innovative voice in
the game. In his first season Bolton reached the semi-finals of the League Cup
and FA Cup, as well as the play-offs, but came up short in all three. A year
later, they defeated Preston in the play-off final and returned to the
Premiership for the third time, where they would remain for 11 seasons.
The unfashionable
Yonners, so scorned by their streetwise Mancunian cousins were effectively the
second side in King Cotton country, with Massive Club Citeh, regularly enduring
home defeats to the likes of Bury and Stockport, floundering in their wake.
While Allardyce’s football was never a style to please the purist, the presence
of such fading stars as Nicholas Anelka, Yuri Djorkaeff, Fredi Bobic, Fernando
Hierro, Jay Jay Okocha and Ivan Campo made Bolton an intriguing, eccentric and
valuable presence in the Premier League. They didn’t win any silverware, but
they were runners-up in the League Cup in 2004 and recorded 4 consecutive top 8
finishes, a record of consistency bettered only by Chelsea, Manchester United,
Liverpool and Arsenal. Allardyce, having led the Trotters to a UEFA Cup last 16
place, bailed out after 8 years at the helm in summer 2007, heading straight
for a disastrous spell on Tyneside, but we’ll ignore that eh?
Post Big Sam, the
smart money had been on Bolton dropping like a stone, but after a false start
under Sammy Lee, the admittedly fractious and dislikeable Gary Megson came in
to do a decent job, before he was replaced by Owen Coyle. If the Liverpool
result in January 1993 had been the harbinger of positive things to come, this
appointment saw the first tolling of the Trotters’ funeral bell in April 2011,
when Stoke City annihilated Bolton 5-0 in an FA Cup semi-final. The following
season, marred by Fabrice Muamba’s near death experience on the pitch at White
Hart Lane, saw Bolton relegated on the final day. Since then, it’s been one
train wreck of a season and one car crash of a manager after another. Coyle;
bulleted. Dougie Freedman; shown the door after a torrid reign. Neil Lennon;
even he couldn’t work his magic with a club £172.9 million in debt and a winding
up petition from HMRC hanging over them. Summer 2016 Bolton were relegated to
League 1, but immediately gained promotion under Phil Parkinson. However, it’s
the off the pitch story that is really worrying.
The
aforementioned £173m debt (so much for parachute payments eh?) was announced
around the same time that news of owner Eddie Davies’s terminal illness broke.
This was the bloke who, alongside Sam Allardyce, seemed to be a synthesis of
the best bits of Richard Scudamore and Peter Ridsdale; seriously, he was
praised as being one of the new breed of go-ahead, entrepreneurial tycoons who
were taking their local teams on to greater and better things. His death in
2016 coincided with Lennon’s dismissal and a takeover of Bolton by former
player Dean Holdsworth’s Sport Shield organisation. None of these events
brought any good news to the club. After exiting the Premier League, Davies
curtailed his investment into the club. This brought the club very close to
being wound up, but as a gesture of his goodwill and as incentive to sell the
club, Davies promised to wipe over £125m of debt owed to him when the club was
sold, which wiped a significant proportion of debt the club owed.
Since the club’s
acquisition by Sports Shield and subsequent sole ownership by Ken Anderson,
intractable financial difficulties have dogged the club despite on-field
success in League One following the 2016 relegation with player strikes,
further winding up orders and financial disputes with other creditors. Despite
the aforementioned promotion under Parkinson and a queasy, last day survival
act in 2018, things were still lousy. Indeed Holdsworth’s disastrous
involvement only ended in September 2018 after it was reported that unless the
club settled unpaid loans of nearly £5 million that Holdsworth had taken out to
buy the club, then Bolton would go into administration, losing 12 points and
going into a two-year transfer embargo as a result. In the end, club president
Davies loaned Ken Anderson £5 million to pay the debt, four days before his
death, with the debt
falling to Anderson after he bought Holdsworth out.
From that point
on, Bolton have been forced into an ever more insecure hand to mouth existence,
to the extent it seems they are permanently on the verge of not just
administration but oblivion. In February
2019, they were again issued with a winding-up petition by HMRC which was
subsequently adjourned, until the end of the season, to allow the impecunious
Anderson’s search for a new owner continued. The financial difficulties placed games
against Ipswich, Middlesbrough and Aston Villa in jeopardy, threatened with
postponement or being played behind closed doors as the local council Safety Advisory
Group prepared to revoke the stadium safety certificate. Meanwhile, the
adjoining Bolton Whites Hotel, owned by Ken Anderson, was also issued with a
winding-up petition in March 2019.
It was almost a
blessed relief once the team were put out of their misery and relegated to
League 1 in April, although there was far greater ignominy to come, when the
home game with Brentford was called off by 16 hours before kick off after
Bolton's players, supported by the Professional Footballers' Association,
refused to play until they had received their unpaid wages. Two cheers to the
PFA, although it should be pointed out that if Gordon Taylor flogged a couple
of the watercolours hanging in his office, Bolton would be solvent again. The game was subsequently awarded to Brentford
1-0, with the travelling Bees fans still waiting for their refunds on travel
and tickets at the time of writing. A predictable farce.
2018/2019 was a
truly rancid season for Bolton Wanderers, but at least they reached the end of
it. FA Trophy winners in 2015 North Ferriby United had no such luck; faced with
the prospect of a third successive relegation, club owner Jamie Waltham, in the
manner of a medieval tyrant turfing peasants from their tied cottages at the
end of a pitch fork, wound the club up over an unpaid debt of £7,645.25, which
is about what Bolton are losing every hour. Thankfully, Ferriby have reformed
and the Villagers will begin again in the Northern Counties East League for
2019/2020, at either Step 5 or Step 6. It’s a long way from the Conference, but
at least there’s a clear progression pathway. No such silver lining appears
forthcoming for Ferriby’s recent opponents Gateshead who, despite another top
half finish in the National League, have been booted out of their (admittedly
dreadful) International Stadium home, as current owner and chair Dr Ranjan
Varghese pretends to try and sell the club who now have a single registered
player and no other employees, while seeming to try and shift the club over the
river to the Kingston Park home of rugby clubs Newcastle Falcons and Newcastle
Thunder, where Newcastle Blue Star once had a single disastrous season in the
National League North before falling off the perch in 2008. Quite why Varghese
wants to go there is beyond comprehension. However while Gateshead continue to
exist, there is no prospect of a phoenix club gaining admission to the Northern
League, which is the same level as Ferriby will start from, as the club already
exists. Gateshead Reserves have stated their intention to quit the Northern
Alliance at Step 7, which may give any Tyneside rive gauche renaissance men a place to begin. Ironically, Dunston
UTS, home of the Paul Gascoigne stand, won the Northern League and will be at
Step 4 in the Northern Premier League East next season.
While the
meritocratic principle of relegation suggests Bolton Wanderers will be plying
their trade in League 1 next year, this may not be the end of the story. On May
8th 2019 the Bolton Wanderers were given 14 days to appoint an administrator to
sort out their £1.2m tax bill. If this is the case and a takeover cannot be
completed in time, Bolton will begin next season with a compulsory 12 point
deduction before a ball has been kicked. Mind that could be preferable to
having Laurence Bassini in charge, if his seemingly fictional takeover bid goes
through.
Bassini, declared
bankrupt in 2007, bought Watford in 2011, sold them a year later, refused to
pay back £1.3m he’d taken in cash advances, before really raising the bar in
2013 by going bankrupt again (the judge described Bassini as ‘evasive' and ‘a
maker of empty threats'), texting the Hertfordshire
Observer to revel in Watford’s play-off defeat to Palace and getting banned from being involved with any club for
3 years by the FA, who described him as "dishonest in his dealings with
the league and with his fellow directors" and someone who "practised
secrecy and deception." Just the kind of fit and proper owner Bolton need;
if it’s enough to make William Gladstone weep, then how on earth must the likes
of Nat Lofthouse feel looking down on this mess?
Northern Premier 'North West' for Dunston...
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