BWFC: Saint

Eddie Davies has received a lot of unwarranted criticism from Bolton fans for not being able to fund transfers for certain players who would have made us a better team.

This has really escalated in recent years as our stock has plummeted dramatically from a top half Premier League team to a team at the bottom of the Championship.

It’s funny I should use the expression of ‘stock plummeting’ as many seem to think that he bought Bolton Wanderers and pumped money into the club in order to make money out of it.

I can’t agree with comments like this because with the exception Mr Glazer, very very few buy football clubs in order to run a profit. At this point I would like to quote Max1’s very well researched comment ‘It is very clear that Moonshift has put far more money into BWFC than it could reasonably have hoped to get back. In 2010, net debt stood at £93million – compared with revenues of £62mm. Even if the club had been operating on a 20% margin (ie earning £12million operating profit) that would be a completely unsustainable level of debt. Since then debt’s increased to £183million (6/2014), and virtually all of the increase has been provided by Moonshift. At no time during this period can Moonshift have expected to get back any of this incremental £90million or so. And Moonshift continued to increase its support even after the club ceased to accrue interest on the loan. Therefore, I think we have to see the last five years support (and I would argue, several years before that) have been a gift to the club.’

There are people constantly calling for Eddie Davies to ‘speculate to accumulate’. I find this expression to be particularly annoying because it quite literally just means to invest. Eddie Davies has invested. In fact he’s probably invested more than he should have in what, especially in recent years, is a fruitless looking project. He’s just been channeling capital into trying to keep a sinking ship afloat.

We’ve enjoyed some amazing times under the reigns of Davies and chairman Phil Gartside- remember our Cup runs, and challenging the big dogs for a top four spot.

We have Davies to thank for funding all of that and he has provided us with one final gift.

On our official website, acting chairman Trevor Birch has confirmed that Davies will wipe off our remaining debt. The following is taken from a club statement:

‘Eddie will be writing off his loans that currently sit in the accounts. He`s effectively gifting the club approximately £185million. There is no bank debt, other than a small loan on the hotel. The club has been financed by Eddie`s loan contributions.’

We’re a club in financial turmoil that could be facing administration. The next second, thanks to our generous and, for some reason, much maligned benefactor we’re almost debt free apart from a small bank loan and an ensuing takeover. Hopefully the right people will be in charge of growing the seed Eddie has given for the club’s future into a giant almighty tree.

Thanks for everything Eddie.