Bolton Wanderers and the credit crunch: Part three

Wednesday October 22nd, 2008

The Guardian is again predicting financial storm clouds ahead for the Wanderers…

After the confusion surrounding Bolton’s connection to the Icelandic banking crisis last week, I wrote that The Guardian deleting that story from their website and the club staying silent on the issue only created more unanswered questions about the state of the club’s finances.

A week on and The Guardian has again delivered a pretty damning verdict on Bolton Wanderers’ financial health. There’s no mention of Iceland this time, but in his club-by-club breakdown of the effects of the credit crunch, David Conn – a highly respected commentator on the business side of football – wrote this about the Wanderers:

Struggling to keep up. Apart from a useful hotel business, the club relies on cash from the owner, Davies. Falling crowds at the Reebok in 2007 were described as “a real concern” then they fell again last season and corporate hospitality was down. The chairman, Phil Gartside, stated plainly that Bolton is “a trading club” – it has to sell players – and could buy only because of “the ongoing support of Edwin Davies and parties connected to him”.

Conn’s final verdict reads:

Came very close to relegation last season and are likely to face a battle, financially and on the field, to stay up again this time.

In another piece on The Guardian’s Sport Blog, Conn details the vast wealth of many of the top Premier League club’s financial benefactors, before writing:

Less is known about Edwin Davies, Bolton’s owner, who made his money in the kettle components company Strix. So far he has funded survival at the Reebok.

Recent initiatives suggest the club is doing everything it can to solve the falling attendances problem, but ultimately it looks like the Wanderers financial future hangs on survival in the Premier League. And by sounds it, if we go down then Eddie Davies’ pockets just won’t be deep enough.

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