Ian Evatt insists he not been put under any pressure to sell players to help the finances at Bolton Wanderers and believes all connected with the club should have faith in the decisions chairman Sharon Brittan and the club's board make for its future.
Wanderers have been owned by Football Ventures (Whites) Limited since late August of 2019. In that time, the Whites have been relegated to League Two and won promotion back to League One and are aiming to be in the mix for the race for the Championship this campaign.
The accounts of Football Ventures were released earlier this week. It confirmed that operating loss for the 12 months ending on June 30 2021 was £517,393, a big reduction compared to nearly £3.5m reported for the previous 12 months at Wanderers.
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In terms of the financial year for the 12 months, a pre-tax loss of £1.468m was reported. However, this is a fall from the loss reported in the same set of figures for the 12 months up until the end of June 2020 which was £3.85m.
Creditors' amounts come to some £31m and loans of £2.5m and more than £7.1m are due to be repaid on or before August 1 of this year. Interest of nearly £1.7m on the second amount will be waived if this is paid by this date.
As that season took place during the 2020/21 season amid the Covid-19 pandemic and games being playd behiond closed doors, finances were invetable hit with turnover for the financial year being more than £6.1m, a drop from almost £9.4m for the 12 months up until June 2020. It meant a fall in gross profit from more than £2.8m to approaching £1.3m.
But Wanderers' parent company, which includes the football club and the hotel at the University of Bolton Stadium, have reported a 'sound financial base' with funding available from shareholders when needed. There is more than £500,000 of cash in the bank.
The question of whether Wanderers may have to sell players was raised with manager Evatt in light of the club's finances being revealed for the season covering a large chunk of the pandemic and the subsequent matches behind closed doors. But he was clear that all connected with the club should have complete faith in the decisions that Brittan and the club's board make for the future.
He insists he has never been put under any pressure to sell players or create assets on thee football pitch to sell on and trusts his chairman to make the best calls for the benefit of the football club. Though he is not under pressure to sell, Evatt concedes that selling players at some point down the line with the vast sums that can be reaped by this is the model that Wanderers will adopt in order to be sustainable in the long term.
He said: "I have and so should everybody, every Bolton Wanderers supporter, all the media, myself, my staff, all the players, have so much faith and respect in Sharon and the rest of the board and whatever decision they make, I know will be the right one for this football club.
“I’ve never been put under any pressure to sell anybody or even get assets to sell. We bring players in to make us better and try to get us higher up the English pyramid. That’s what we’re trying to do at present and everything else, the business side of things, I believe in Sharon, I trust her and I think she’ll make the best calls for Bolton Wanderers.”
Wanderers are seeking to find players for comparatively small fees and get them in the building ahead of their rivals. That was case in January with five players being brought in including the likes of Dion Charles, Aaron Morley and Kyle Dempsey.
He feels that if his January acquisitions had been allowed to become free agents this summer, then Wanderers may well have priced out of the market. But he believes the bargains are still out there to be bought in and can be turned in to assets which can later bring in funds to make the club sustainable in the long term.
He said: “I think you can and I think that’s why we did so much work in January because if we’d have let that go to free auction in the summer, we might have been priced out of it. But the reason we did our work in January was because at that point, the value was good for us and we could be smart with it and get work done before other teams were ready to do so.
“I think we’ll see the benefits from that at the start of the season hopefully. This group has been together now for six months and they’re understanding what we want. We’re trying to tweak things to make us even better, but at large I think we’ve got a really good squad of players and obviously we’re working really hard to find those rough diamonds and polish them up into the big assets.
“That’s our model now and what we want to do. That’s the only real way of becoming sustainable to be honest is player trading. That’s just a fact.
“No disrespect to anything else, but the massive sums of money that you can get for players and your own talent is huge, and that means if this club is safe forever for the future, then why wouldn’t we do it.”
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