[Slick_Footwork]

During the early 2000s my boss was a good friend of a Bolton director. They knew they were in financial trouble but Allardyce threatened to resign if they didn’t continue to back him (at that point, he was actually popular amongst Bolton fans). They chose to go further into debt but, in his own words, they knew they were ####ed if they ever got relegated. Deep in a hole, they kept digging in a desperate attempt to stay in the Premier League, until ........

I think there were a lot of teams in that era doing the same thing, over financing.

Does sound a bit arsey, but that was commonplace at the time. I guess he was confident in his own ability and felt he could take them into the Champions League.

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I think Slick makes some good points.

- If we want rid of the owner then we need to be a Premier League Team to get the value up to a level where a sale is acceptable to Lai. Big Sam must be seen as the best bet to insure that.

- To sell to club by staying up needs to be shored up by spending money. So at least we will get some grit injected into the spine of the team in January. Maybe even early January for once to make an earlier impact on the pitch.

This looks like a tidy the house up before selling it action and if getting Big Sam in results in a stronger squad, winning games and getting a new owner of the club.

I am all in.

Yup, all very valid, especially (HOPEFULLY) the last paragraph.

Some great points made in many posts above; I'm latching on to the one (Slick?) that reminds us of that really entertaining Bolton team of around 2000 with JJ Ocotcha. What a player he was! (Still got his number Sam, I'm sure he could STILL do a job for us!)
As much as I like SB I can see his time was up. Let's move forward with a bit of optimism now.

On the subject of the much maligned Tony Pulis, wasn't he Manager of the Year when he was appointed? And yes - he did a great job for the first year or so, so it wasn't all bad.
I always found him quite entertaining too!

Happy Christmas to all!

A couple of points here, the first being if we were a successful Premier League club why would the owner want to sell? The whole purpose of him buying the club in the first place was to own a successful club.  On Big Sam's history. He may have created an OK Bolton team, apparently he also threatened to walk if the club did not go into debt to back his transfer plans, we all know how well that worked out.  He also ran into problems with BBC's Panorama when they produced evidence of him paying bribes to agents, or him having to resign as England manager after only 67 days after being filmed giving advice on how to 'get around' player 3rd party ownership.  The F.A. also investigated him for some dodgy transfer dealings with Luton and we all know the way the F.A. work if your in the know      

I think the owner probably bought us with the intention of taking profits year after year, much like Jeremy Peace did. Unfortunately with relegation in his first year, it's not proved to be so easy.

I assume that if we were able to achieve reliable mid table obscurity in the Premier League, that would still be his intention. But with relegation in his first year and 2 seasons in the Championship, probably running at a heavy loss based on our wage bill, it's not proved to be the cash cow that he bought into. The murmurings of him wanting to sell seem to be too loud to be purely speculation. So I guess if we could scrape up this year by the skin of our teeth, enabling him to sell at a profit, he would do so.

As for the big Sam allegations, I don't think he did a lot wrong when in charge of England, but he was naive to the fact that he might've been set up. His actual advice was just factual truth about the 3rd party ownership situation. As for the bribe allegations, I don't like that or corruption generally, but I believe it's probably rife across the industry. That doesn't make it right, but I believe he's not alone.

If you look at how many managers sign players who are represented by the same agent, it's actually frightening. Wolves is one of the few widely publicised cases, where Nuno Espirito is represented by Jorge Mendes and so are most of the players he has signed. Because they have done well it all appears legit and might well be, but it would be extremely naive to dismiss that he's not getting his palm tickled for recommending players that benefit his agent financially for brokering the deal. It's a clear conflict of interest at the very least.

I also believe performance enhancing drug (PED) use is probably rife within players too. It's just a matter of time before that comes out and while 1 player will probably be dug out for it, the reality is that they are all at it. I mean there was a story that a handful of Premier League players were caught for it last season, but it was okay because it was for 'therapeutic' reasons (i.e. given by doctor prescription). Anyone who knows anything about PEDs - which I happen to - knows that young pro footballers do not have naturally low testosterone. They simply wouldn't have made it this far in the game. But the reality is, football doesn't want to outlaw this drug use that would make the game slower, potentially ban names who attract big sponsorships and such.

And that's why the allegations don't really bother me. Everyone is a dodgy crook. I'm only concerned with his ability to get the best out of lads and hopefully keep us up.