It was announced over the weekend that Bolton’s prospective new owners, believed to be the Football Ventures consortium, has agreed a Heads of Terms Agreement with Wanderers’ administrators.
As a result, Bolton Wanderers moved a step in the right direction towards being a fully functional football club once again.
However, there is still a huge amount of work to do for the incoming owners with just over a month until the new season.
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Management changes?
As well as needing to actually confirm the takeover itself in the coming days, the task ahead for the incoming owners is a daunting one.
First on the agenda could well be any changes to the management at Wanderers. As things stand, Phil Parkinson is Bolton’s manager, the question is, do Football Ventures want the former Bradford boss in charge when the season gets going in August?
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With such little time until the season starts, it looks likely that he’ll be kept on purely due to time constraints.
Recruitment
As we’re all well aware by now, Bolton’s playing squad is a little on the small side.
Bolton face the daunting prospect of having to recruit effectively a whole squad as the club currently have just 13 players on the books, with just seven of those making appearances in the side last season.
With a non-existent squad, made smaller by the departure of young Luca Connell, bringing in players quickly has to be a priority for the new owners.
2019/20 kits
Last year, Bolton’s home kit was revealed to the fans on June 8. We’re already a month past that date and we’ve seen and heard nothing of the sort this year.
It’s unclear, as things stand, whether sportswear firm Macron are still Bolton’s kit manufacturer going into the season ahead thanks to the club stumbling into administration at the end of the year.
Season tickets
With just over a month to go until the first fixture of the season, there has been no announcement of season tickets so far.
For fans desperate to renew their season tickets, the lack of news has undoubtedly been hugely frustrating as this formality would likely have already been sorted at a club running in ordinary circumstances.
Pre-season friendlies
It is believed that Phil Parkinson and his very limited Bolton Wanderers side have begun pre-season fitness training today.
However, at the time of writing, no pre-season friendlies have been arranged to give the players any match preparation before the season kicks off at Wycombe on August 3.
In fairness, any friendlies organised at the moment would likely not go so well due to Bolton’s limited number of options in the playing staff department.
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Fight off Laurence Bassini legal challenge
As is Bolton’s new owners didn’t already have a huge task ahead of them, it was made an even tougher prospect as Laurence Bassini, who was Bolton owner for all of about five minutes back in April, is believed to be tabling a legal challenge to attempt to win control of the club.
Bassini took interest in Bolton back in April, when Ken Anderson was still in charge. His proposed bid fell through though when Anderson and Eddie Davies’s trust placed the club in administration.
It is worth noting that Bassini had the same opportunity to place a bid for Bolton Wanderers with the club’s administrators as the Football Ventures consortium, the deadline for which was June 12.
With just 33 days until Bolton’s first competitive fixture of the season, it really is going to be a mammoth task for Bolton’s incoming owners to ready the club for the season ahead.
Time will tell if they’re able to pull everything together and give Wanderers a fighting chance in League One next season.