The trend tends to go: the bigger the club, the bigger the financial loss. And in League One, they don’t get bigger than Bolton Wanderers.
Last season, the cumulative losses across all 24 teams were £154m in the third tier of English football.
Bolton contributed just under £14m. In a league awash with debt and negative numbers, that did not even move the dial. In fact, the club insisted it was a “deliberate strategy”.
Then nothing else was said. Remember: this is League One, where money has a very short shelf life.
Those losses can be offset if promotion is achieved – which is why the spending was planned.
Yet with a wage bill that is astonishingly 98.8 per cent of Bolton’s turnover, failure to climb the ladder could lead to the most spectacular fall.
“It costs millions just to turn the lights on at places like this,” a source close to the club told The i Paper.
“This is a Premier League stadium that costs the same as a Premier League stadium to put matches on, yet we are charging League One prices.
“You have to gamble in this division like nowhere else. I’m not sure how much longer it can go on.”
For so long a top-flight staple, Bolton have been dragged down by the financial burden of the stadium, stuck in the third tier or lower for seven years.
It is all well and good when you have owners who are willing to take on these debts.
But what happens when they get bored?
There are only a finite number of businesspeople willing to adopt a loss-leading enterprise from the outset, one with little hope of breaking even, never mind making a profit.
Carlisle United had a wage bill of £7m in a season they were relegated from the Football League.
Bolton simply must go up. Everyone is banking on it. But living on the edge is not just the modus operandi of the club’s hierarchy.
Supporters have been given the roughest of rides this season.
A breathless 13 stoppage-time goals have earned Bolton a crucial 18 points that have been the difference between a shot at promotion and mid-table obscurity, followed by the impending financial oblivion.
The average minute of a Bolton goal this season is 58 – by far the highest in League One. And they keep getting later, and later.
Ibrahim Cissoko’s 101st-minute strike in the 3-3 draw with Huddersfield Town lays claim to being one of the latest goals ever scored by the club.
It is likely to take another of these last-gasp interventions to get the better of a Bradford City side who Wanderers drew with in their final league match of the campaign.
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The alternative does not bear thinking about.
“So many clubs fly by the seat of their pants in everything they do,” a source says.
“It is just numbers to them. As long as they go up, they can write those losses off down the line.
“It isn’t clubs like ours’ fault, though. But it cannot go on like this.”
