With Dean Holdsworth and his Sports Shield group on the verge of completing a takeover at Bolton Wanderers, Gordon Sharrock – who covered Wanderers for The Bolton News throughout Holdsworth’s playing days at the club – gives an insight into the man the Whites could be getting as their new owner

HE arrived with a record-breaking price tag and a reputation as a London “glamour boy”.

But when Dean Holdsworth left the Reebok Stadium five years later, he was every inch a Bolton Wanderer.

He never quite hit the heights expected of a £3.5million signing and his scoring ratio of 49 goals in 186 appearances was considered by some to have been rather modest.

Indeed, there are some who best remember him not for his hits but for his notorious miss in the FA Cup semi-final against Aston Villa at Wembley in April 2000 when, with the match scoreless in the second period of extra time, Eidur Gudjohnsen broke on the left and drew David James out of his area before side-footing an inch-perfect cross to present Holdsworth with a seemingly unmissable chance.

With the goal at his mercy and Wanderers fans in the 62,000 crowd convinced it was the club’s destiny to win the last FA Cup final at Wembley as they had won the first, the would-be hero scooped his shot over the bar from 11 yards.

It was scant consolation that the tearful Holdsworth had worked as hard and played as well as anyone to help Sam Allardyce’s Division One hopefuls prove more than a match forPremier Division Villa. Moments earlier he’d hit the post with a free kick and subsequently was the only Bolton player to beat James from 12 yards as Wanderers lost the resulting penalty shootout 4-1.

It should have been Deano’s finest hour in his most productive season in a Bolton shirt. Instead, he is constantly reminded of that head-in-hands moment – as he surely will be again if he is reunited with Wanderers fans in his new role after spearheading the takeover of the club that has come to mean so much to him since he first walked through the door in October 1997.

Then he was the big-money signing Colin Todd hoped would help keep newly-promoted Wanderers in the Premier League. Now, he again bears the weight of expectation with supporters hoping his arrival will stop a slide that is threatening to plunge the club back down to the third tier of English football.

Holdsworth certainly has the credentials. Football has been his life since his career kicked off at Watford in 1986 while in recent times he has become proficient enough as a businessman to have taken his takeover bid further than any of his competitors.

More fundamentally, if an appetite for hard work, a knowledge of football and an understanding of Bolton Wanderers and the club’s supporters count for anything, then he has all the requirements to succeed – as has been proved by his tenacious and dogged pursuit of a takeover.

For there is much more to Dean Holdsworth than the Jack-the-lad persona of the one-time member of Wimbledon’s infamous Crazy Gang.

Yes, he was party to some of the wilder excesses at the Cinderella club that ruffled feathers and built a reputation that didn’t sit well with the Premier League elite or the establishment. And it is true that he tapped into those experiences as he helped generate a team spirit that eventually paid rich rewards as Wanderers, like Wimbledon, claimed their place at the top table and punched well above their weight for so many years.

First impressions suggested he might be stepping out of his comfort zone when he came to the North West.

Always a smart dresser who cut a handsome figure in his well-tailored suits, he could easily have been mistaken for a fancy Dan type. But the streetwise kid from Walthamstow was no southern softie.

This newspaper discovered early on that the genial Holdsworth was not to be toyed with. Coverage of one personal appearance where he was pictured with an attractive young lady referenced a previous indiscretion – a dalliance with a Page Three model which was sensationalised in the tabloid press.

Holdsworth angrily pointed out that he and his family had put that affair behind them and took a dim view of his “local paper” raking over old coals. He argued, in no uncertain terms, that it was in everyone’s best interest that we understood that he had been given a second chance by his family and was determined there would be no further upsets.

Nevertheless, he was prepared to give us another chance and from then on a relationship developed that bore fruit for all concerned.

Deano was always available and could be relied on to give an honest assessment of a match, a personal performance, or the current state of play. In turn, he was free to get on with the important job on the field, knowing there would be no undue attention paid to his previous misdemeanour.

And he did that job well, initially under Todd and then under Allardyce. For, while he might not have been as prolific as at Brentford or Wimbledon, he was a tough customer, hard-working and intelligent and very much a team player.

Crucially, he was an influential character in the dressing room, expounding an ideology that teams not necessarily blessed with the most talented of individuals can make up for what they lack in quality with togetherness and team spirit allied to solid tactics, endeavour and organisation.

There was no trashing of cars and slashing of team-mates’ clothing, which were par for the course with the Crazy Gang.

But, indulged by Allardyce, Holdsworth was the instigator of many of the so-called bonding sessions, including the players v management “forfeit” scheme adopted on the club’s return to the Premiership in 2001.

If the team lost by more than three goals, the players paid the forfeit, if they won by more than three, the management copped for it. So when Wanderers kicked off with a 5-0 win at Leicester, Holdsworth insisted on tables being booked for chairman Phil Gartside, Allardyce and his backroom team and office staff at a Knutsford restaurant where the menu included sheep’s testicles.

There was never a dull moment with Deano, who left a big footprint at Bolton Wanderers and has always had the club at heart.

He might have been a Londoner, but he developed a genuine affinity for the club that prompted him to enquire about the manager’s job when Gary Megson was sacked in December 2009, only to discover another former Wanderers striker, Owen Coyle, was already lined up.

Little could he have known at that time that he would eventually return to Bolton in a considerably more powerful role.