A few days ago the Bolton News ran their story about two parties being involved in a race to buy the club for £30 million.
It’s news that should be welcomed. We won’t properly move forward until Ken Anderson sells up. That point can’t even be regarded as controversial, as Anderson has admitted himself he doesn’t have the money some others in the Championship have.
It is time to get excited though? Probably not. Investment is obviously welcome, but any takeover will likely take time, we only have to remember when Anderson took over himself, and how he even originally wasn’t Dean Holdsworth’s partner, coming in late in the tumultuous episode that was the second half of the 2015-16 season.
We only have to look at our unwashed friends down the road at Wigan, whose acquisition by a Hong Kong-based consortium has seemed to take forever. To nick Marc Iles’ gag, it may have been down to Dave Whelan repeating the story of his broken leg to the prospective new owners, but in seriousness, it does illustrate that due diligence and the like has to be done on these things.
Even if and when one of these parties was to be ultimately successful, we’re still going in blind. How many clubs have been taken over by foreign (or British for that matter, let’s be honest) investment in recent years and going all horribly wrong from there? For every Chelsea or Man City (ignoring the political aspect) there has been a Leyton Orient, a Blackburn, a Birmingham, a couple of times for Portsmouth, and others. Hopefully, Anderson and co will do their homework on that front but we’ve been through a lot in recent years, and it would actually be nice to not have any off-field drama and feel like a normal football club in that regard.
So yes, welcome a takeover by all means, but I’ll only see it when they’ve got the keys to the castle. Or the University of Bolton Stadium.