League 1 - Bolton, Bury & Coventry

[Northstandboy]

Bury FC have been sold to a football analytics company:

Bury owner Dale says club has been sold

Bury are waiting to hear if a late offer to buy the club will save them from being expelled from the English Football League.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[AbbeyOx]

deal done for Bury

https://twitter.com/x/status/1165013298405879808

 

[mickbrownsconscience]

Oh come on, you know they're just kicking the can down the road...

 

[andystroud]

Oh come on, you know they're just kicking the can down the road...

Unfortunately, I think you are right.

 

[Grumpy Git]

They have a squad of what? Kids.
They won’t be able to fulfill their games to a professional level.
I suggest if Bolton and Bury do manage to creep out of existence. That they play games, but at the end of the season, their results are voided and they are relegated. At least money can be earned by playing matches.

 

[FalmouthOx]

Seems that relegation is viewed as a financial disaster, but similarly many think promotion can easily bankrupt a smaller club with limited ground and commercial capacity. So the biggest risk to a clubs financial sustainability is either promotion or relegation??!! - "the unknown" - cost increases/income reductions which can easily unbalance the books. The gap between each league has widened massively in recent years - and not just on the pitch. Most teams in CH/L1/2 cannot afford to get either promoted or regulated. It also doesn't even make sense (if you get promoted) for a Chairman to spend millions on players who can compete in the league above - if the team then do a Sunderland (but without the fan base of SFC) and come straight back down, the wages would then bankrupt the club!

Hypothetically, and from an EFL perspective, the best solution would be for each league to consist of the same clubs each year - no promotions or relegations but every club working within it's financial means - the EFL presenting rosettes and a cake at the end of a season to the league winners, who would try and do it again in the same league an against the same clubs next year??! Physical attendances would of course drop enormously as fans began to see buying a ST and supporting a local club as pointless - but the EFL could easily protect it's own income streams through streaming matches PAYG over EFL apps (!) - within a couple of generations, our unborn grandkids/great grandkids would then support one of the big 5 or 6 PL clubs. The warning signs are there (Old Trafford every week!) and places like Asia where young kids adopt Liverpool and Man Utd etc as their teams - the new generations in this society also demand instant success/gratification. They don't and won't get it supporting teams outside the PL.

So as the once mighty fall, and are shuffled out of the FL, can we reasonably expect none league clubs to replace them? Can they afford to step up and finance the required ground upgrades if they were to replace say Bury/Bolton/others? There are probably many more clubs "in trouble" than we know about but lets say hypothetically 10 league clubs go into administration (early warnings ar WIPs) over the next 5 years - could we reasonably expect 10 current NL teams to be able to replace them? I do wonder whether the EFL really is being deliberately neglectful to possibly allow Premiership second strings in - they have done it in the cup already

Surely most clubs from mid championship down, arent actually very sustainable from gate receipts/sponsorship alone, and so have to keep their heads above water through selling their best players on the cheap? This widens the gap further. The only way this will ever change is if there are much bigger receipts from TV finding their way all the way down the pyramid, some sort of wage capping/agent fee capping/squad size capping/safety net for clubs in trouble.

Grass roots of UK football is in a mess. The EFL are supposed to be policing owners and are the only organisation who can stop a ruthless chairman taking over a club with the sole intention of running it into the ground. They have failed football and are unfit for purpose. If they "sign off" on an owner running a club properly, and he/she doesn't, fans groups should be able to take temporary stewardship of clubs (financed totally by EFL) when things go wrong. they should be financially obligated to keep the wheels turning until new owners are found, and to pay in full the staff and players. It seems currently a one way street - the EFL making massive revenues, providing a s**t service, having seemingly no culpability and giving nothing back.

A co-ordinated stand by the fans of ALL EFL clubs, like a half time protest with flags and banners, would surely ignite the debate. If clubs stand by and do nothing, they condone /endorse the EFL and cannot complain if their club is next. EFL should be made up of fans from each club, not fat cat executives with their own agendas.

 

[Roge]

C&N Sporting Risk

Good luck to Bury in their fight for survival. These are the accounts of the of the perspective purchasers. If the EFL sanction the sale on this evidence then words will fail me!

 

[Gary Baldi]

The EFL should take a stand and kick Bury out - I hate saying this about a long standing club, but this saga is making our league look like a joke. How much longer can the rest of the League 1 team wait on the whims of the EFL?

Someone needs to take a decision for the good of football long term, not the embarrassment of losing a club that they never should have allowed to start the season, in the season. Where does Campbell suppose to get the money from?

 

[Gary Baldi]

Another can kick by the EFL - clearly they don't do recycling in that organisation

Bury have until Tuesday to complete sale

Bury are given until 17:00 BST on Tuesday to complete a sale and avoid being expelled from the EFL.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Concretebob]

Bolton could face league expulsion - BBC Sport

Bolton Wanderers are given a deadline of Tuesday to complete the sale of the club or face expulsion from the English Football League.

www.google.co.uk

 

[Grumpy Git]

C&N Sporting Risk

Good luck to Bury in their fight for survival. These are the accounts of the of the perspective purchasers. If the EFL sanction the sale on this evidence then words will fail me!

Jesus, i’m More solvent

 

[Scotchegg]

Jesus, i’m More solvent

Jump in, you've got until Tuesday to get your own train set!!!

 

[Wallop]

C&N Sporting Risk

Good luck to Bury in their fight for survival. These are the accounts of the of the perspective purchasers. If the EFL sanction the sale on this evidence then words will fail me!

Wow - perhaps someone with an accounting background can explain why a company that is technically insolvent should be allowed to buy Bury.

 

[AbbeyOx]

Bolton could face league expulsion - BBC Sport

Bolton Wanderers are given a deadline of Tuesday to complete the sale of the club or face expulsion from the English Football League.

www.google.co.uk

Bolton’s turn for deadline threats then. how many extensions will they get?
yes it’s crap for fans of both teams but this has dragged on now and is beyond a joke.
if Bolton survive then the efl will have proved they’ve not got a clue.
another team get a goal difference bonus after yesterday’s 5-0 for Ipswich

 

[Marked Ox]

Bolton’s turn for deadline threats then. how many extensions will they get?
yes it’s crap for fans of both teams but this has dragged on now and is beyond a joke.
if Bolton survive then the efl will have proved they’ve not got a clue.
another team get a goal difference bonus after yesterday’s 5-0 for Ipswich

I think there is a slight difference between Bury and Bolton based on the Football League statement:

Homepage - The English Football League

The Official home of the English Football League

www.efl.com

In that the League have already received all the assurances etc (ie. it is just a case of doing the completion signatures etc) and the League have been very public about that.

It is still too late* though and at the latest should have been done at the same time as Bury with the same deadlines. Both cases do still smack of kicking the can down the road though. At least Bury haven't played games with a youth team so in their case it is a level playing field.

*Neither team would have started the season if I had the choice unless they were sorted financially. The same should apply to us and the Football League should adopt the same rules for this as the National League. I never thought I would same the admin of the NL has something right!

 

[AbbeyOx]

I think there is a slight difference between Bury and Bolton based on the Football League statement:

Homepage - The English Football League

The Official home of the English Football League

www.efl.com

In that the League have already received all the assurances etc (ie. it is just a case of doing the completion signatures etc) and the League have been very public about that.

It is still too late* though and at the latest should have been done at the same time as Bury with the same deadlines. Both cases do still smack of kicking the can down the road though. At least Bury haven't played games with a youth team so in their case it is a level playing field.

*Neither team would have started the season if I had the choice unless they were sorted financially. The same should apply to us and the Football League should adopt the same rules for this as the National League. I never thought I would same the admin of the NL has something right!

yeah i get the difference in Bolton’s case.
it’s what happens at the end of the season that bothers me if Bolton survive.
say we’re level on points with Ipswich, those 5 goals yesterday could be the deciding factor.
will be interesting what efl do about these games where other teams have had an unfair advantage (teams playing a weakened side)

 

[RyanioBirdio]

As much as I hate that I’m saying it, neither team should’ve been allowed to start the season if you look at it on a purely logistical level. Bolton refused to fulfil a fixture in the Championship last season and have had outrageous levels of debt for many years, and Bury were positively brassic for months - this was always going to happen and they had several months to get this sorted before the season kicked off. You can have many different arguments about the situation and how it was allowed to get to this point, but the entirety of the league has to have its integrity protected and precedents can’t be allowed to be set in this manner. Now any club that ever finds itself in this position can make a case for being allowed to string it along for months while the rest of us get on with the small matter of actually fulfilling our campaigns to a competitive standard.

I feel truly sorry for the fans of clubs such as these, and it could happen to us as well as countless others in the future, but this just can’t happen again. There are 70 other football league clubs who can’t see their competition brought into disrepute in this manner on anything approaching a regular basis, and I think that’s worth protecting more than clubs who kept playing chicken and thinking it would all work out.

It might sound heartless and cold, and the EFL have an awful lot of blood on their hands over all of this, but kick them out and move on.

 

[Ian]

Expulsion from the league will result in the liquidation of a club. Not playing for a season, as some have suggested, likewise. The EFL are giving each club as much opportunity to survive as possible.
Lessons can be learnt from this saga and changes implemented for the future.
I hope that both clubs can be saved.

 

[RyanioBirdio]

Expulsion from the league will result in the liquidation of a club. Not playing for a season, as some have suggested, likewise. The EFL are giving each club as much opportunity to survive as possible.
Lessons can be learnt from this saga and changes implemented for the future.
I hope that both clubs can be saved.

I understand that, but it’s getting to the point where the damage that will be done to the entire structure as a whole, and the danger of the precedents that will in turn be set, is and are too grave. This has gone on long enough now. There can’t be repeated extensions and delays while the rest of us plough further and further into our legitimate seasons.

I don’t want to see any club liquidated, but I don’t want to see our entire competition reduced to a sideshow either. If the league’s ability to function continues to be disrupted, and the playing field carries on being skewed in the case of Bolton, they both have to go.

 

[Gary Baldi]

The EFL are starting to massively compromise their own league structure now - teams that haven't had the Bolton gimme will feel aggrieved if they are taken over and they sign a bunch of players.

Sorry Bolton and Bury, time for you to jog on. And I say it with a heavy heart