by Ten Bobsworth »
30 Nov 2023 10:05
If its a Fairy Godmother, a Sugar Daddy or Father Christmas you're after, Ken Anderson certainly isn't your man but what he achieved at Bolton in his first two years was actually a minor miracle.
He arrived at Bolton in March 2016 when the club was in free fall and facing a winding up petition from HMRC. The previous owner, Eddie Davies, had spent virtually all his fortune on the club and the previous chairman, Phil Gartside, had recently died of a brain tumour, having been seriously ill for several months.
Davies knew that he had a relatively short life expectancy himself and had been trying to sell the club for several years. He said that he had had around fifty approaches all of whom he considered to be either tyre kickers or wannabe asset strippers.
In the end, between a rock and a hard place, Davies did a deal with what the Bolton News ludicrously dubbed 'the Sports Shield consortium'. The 'consortium' actually comprised of two £1 companies owned respectively by Ken Anderson and Dean Holdsworth. The 'consortium' paid Davies £1 for 95% of the shares, or to put it another way ten bob each.
Holdsworth, promptly appointed himself CEO and signed off on a £4m loan repayable within two weeks at an interest rate of 24% p.a.
Anderson became chairman and recognised (almost certainly before he got involved at all) that BWFC would go nowhere fast without a capable CEO and a new football manager. He lost no time in appointing both which left no room for a Holdsworth sinecure. The outcome was that Bolton achieved promotion back to the Championship in Anderson's first year in charge whilst struggling with (and massively reducing) the overspending on player wages on 'legacy' contracts .
Avoiding relegation in his second year in charge was an even bigger achievement on the money Anderson had available but he did manage to break even by getting Cardiff City to part with £6m for the services of striker, Gary Madine. Madine played all of 26 games for Cardiff, failing to score in any of them.
Anderson's principle objective was to hold the fort whilst trying to find someone to fund BWFC in the longer term. He failed in that, unsurprisingly. Eddie Davies having tried for years to sell the club once again had to come to the club's rescue in September 2018 repaying the loan Holdsworth had landed the club with two and a half years previously. Davies was on holiday at Quinta do Lago with his wife at the time and died within two or three days of making the arrangements. Anderson had managed to negotiate the interest charges down substantially and personally borrowed the nearly £5million cost of the loan repayment from Davies.
In all probability, the £1.5million that Anderson introduced into the club in the months following Davies' death was Davies money as well.