Football Ventures or Football Vultures

The real answer is football as we knew it is dead. When a player such as Harry MacGuire can command a fee of £75M and a wage of £1/2M per week, it is obvious that any club unable to match these sort of figures either needs a fairy godmother or a miracle.Football clubs were set up to match groups of local players against those of other towns, and that is how the Football League began. The rewards now available through TV monies (to which most of,incidentally, are contributing through Sky ) are producing an intimate group of six or seven clubs devouring the precious income that many of us are paying for. That and the Bosman ruling, and agents have long since taken the game a distance away from its working class origins, and without some sort of realisation of this up high in the Football Association (by a kind of football Brexit) there is little future for clubs other than the city elite and their media followers.
As I have said in earlier posts there is little point in buying BWFC without there being a prop to support it like some property investment (the ground doesn't come into this category) and as I have said the purchase and sale of the hotel might in the short term have helped FV stabilise the football. It is reasonable to ask why, if both the club and hotel, come under the Burnden Leisure brand, why it was necessary to divide them between two administrators, and why we were told a month ago that a little problem, soon to be resolved, had arisen. The little problem aeems to be the same Mafia that now controls our wonderful game(not the FA or the EFL) bidding against FV, and unless there is some sort of national or governmental intervention it is not only Bolton Wanderers that is likely to be lost. Our players are just pawns in all this, and they like the rest of us supporters deserve better from whomsoever the powers-that-be might be.

Hotel admin state a debt of £5.5M to Michael James. Unsure of thats as secured or not. If not then he will have a lot of sway on whether to accept pr reject perspective takeover. Surely he holds the cards and poll position for FV to just get that club deal done.

The latest impasse has resulted in some making comparison between FV and KA and of course mention of KA conjures up the pariah, in their view, of our downfall. But isn't there another interpretation? Rather that the debts  and day to day management of the cashflow is extraordinarily difficult and to survive at all requires juggling of payments, paying as little as legally possible and generally some difficult decisions? Do not the administrators' continuing problems paying football creditors and FV's reluctance to sign on the dotted line and their previous cold feet, rather than reeking of KA's alleged duplicity actually stand foursquare with his dilemma and to some degree in mitigation of some of his actions ( we cannot now know all and there will be skeletons ahead).

I wonder if KA had been able to sell up after our promotion from Div 1 or even after hanging on to the championship place, would he have been as ill-regarded as now? Is there not a version of history that he did his best, gave Phil a reasonable last season transfer budget and that when he pulled the plug on personal expenditure he was being attacked constantly by the BN, the Supporters Trust and sections of fans making him wonder why on earth he was doing it.

The pattern now repeats. FV are moving from saviours to villains and so too are the administrators and the players are again on strike. What do we all want? Bassini 2?

Of course, the hotel sticking point seems odd given that everyone has known all along that separate administrators acting for different ( sometimes) creditors have ever had conflicting priorities. 

I sometimes think that administration has been painted as a better situation than KA's ownership or a path to salvation, but it isn't is it. It's one step from liquidation and legal processes of such complexity aren't going to resolve themselves to footballing deadlines. The whole situation really needs the family of football clubs to own the root cause- their own greed and that of players and agents fuelled by bizarre television deals.

On a separate thread ws63, I think, argues that maybe a club like BWFC could be made financially viable outside the Premiership. I actually think the bar has moved and that the championship must now be bracketed with the Premier League as being out of reach and ruinous for most clubs. It's an appalling situation. BWFC and Bury are currently in the headlines - plenty of toerhs will follow- this is way beyond the fault of a particular owner or adminstrator or buying consortium. I'm not even sure that having a billionaire is any guarantee of future prosperity. We had a most generous benefactor and because of him we had some excellent years but despite his generosity even beyond the grave as it turned out the inherent seeds of disaster were germinating apace?

I have principles which go very deep grud and I'll explain.

I have worked in various places where it was illegal to strike. Then I became self employed. if I went on strike, who would I hurt the most? I worked on my principle of "work hard, play hard". 

If I didn't like a place where I worked, I would find another place to work. You should read what you wrote in your first post. Some of the players are working at another club, based on your principle. Let's not forget, no matter where they go, the wages owed are guaranteed.

Here's a good example of a strike, which happened near me... It was a small company, which employed about 50 people. It was a freezer company, one which froze things were chickens. The employees were unionized.

They demanded a dollar an hour pay rise and were backed by the union on this. They were offered 50 cents an hour rise, the company stating that they could not afford their request. I can't remember how long they were on strike for, but the company said that if they were not back at work by a certain date, they would have to close the company.

No-one listened and the union stuck by their demands, the company closed and 50 people wished they had never gone out on strike. It never re-opened. 50 unemployed people, lost dues to the union. You tell me who was the winner.
 
So don't talk to me about strike principles.

As and when do we as just fans start to get really worried about our club that we have all supported all our lives could be kicked out of the league ? It's alright everyone having our say about striking players and things like that, but is anyone really worried ? COYWM

Andy, I have read whites63's reply to your post and I agree with him that you're post is one of defending Anderson. Having said that there is a lot in the financial accounting of BWFC that we will never be made aware of. Even under the reign of Davies/Gartside, it always appeared there was a maze of companies connected to the club. The Anderson reign had no financial clarity either. Perhaps Anderson was not as clever as Davies/Gartside in the shell game, hence when the reality set in and he couldn't find the money, then it was the creditors who weren't paid, not forgetting the Doige affair with Forest Green either. The loan from Davies to Anderson was his payout, which he knew he had to protect. It's obviously buried in the hotel and this is the endgame with FV and the different adin people to gain control of the club and hotel.

I have written many contracts, with many conditions. Nothing is sold until all the conditions are waived and it appears that this is the case here. If the hotel is the diamond in the rough, then whomever owns the diamond will be able to purchase the club in the reverse. It seems that there is more than ne buyer for the hotel. After listening to Simon Jordan and Bassini's loan money from Sullivan, don't elininate him from the equation. 

Yes, it's a mess and unlikely to resolve itself before the season starts. If we are at an impasse, then we have to see who blinks first. The club could be out of the league before anyone does, as it seems that we don't have a team to field.

I'm getting to the point where I don't care anymore, no matter who's fault it is. Without an enquiry we'll never know... and even then.

I agree with you entirely with the Championship situation.  As with the Premier League, it appears that the price of success is ruinous to all but say, the top six clubs. I questioned some time ago whether we wanted to go back to the Premiership and be the whipping boys, as Huddersfield, Sunderland and Derby have been in recent years.  Won't be long before Bournemouth and Brighton are back with us too.

One day and grud may like this one, maybe it's us fans who should be going on strike. Stick your Skysports, BT, subscriptions. Now see how they like it when the shoe is on the other foot and we are appreciated by our clubs, when they are begging us to come back.