It won’t be before 11.30am, but tomorrow morning, or perhaps even around dinnertime, Bolton’s winding-up case will be heard in the High Court.
What is going to happen? Not many people have a clue. It seems along the spectrum of the three main possible outcomes, the best and the worst case scenarios are the most possible, with the one in the middle seemingly more unlikely. So what are those three possible outcomes?
Firstly, the best case scenario, where a deal is struck and a takeover can proceed. According to the Sun, Ken Anderson and Parminder Basran and co were speaking earlier today, but the club’s brief statement this afternoon, speaking of a mutual termination, offered no sort of clarity. Maybe they are still talking. Maybe this is part of the showmanship and misdirection we’ve come to expect in recent weeks. Could there be another candidate to take over the club? If so, this would need to be concretely proved in court.
The worst case scenario is the club is liquidated, HMRC want their money and others will be happy to pile on and get what they’re owed. It may not necessarily mean an immediate liquidation, there could be time (a week perhaps) to get something sorted, but it’s not a lot of time.
Administration is another possibility, it would be better to get that done now rather than a few weeks time, when any points deduction would be deferred to next season. But who funds administration?
We’ll have some answers tomorrow. Hopefully, they’re the correct ones for us.