ANOTHER week goes by and more financial details at Wanderers are thrown into the public domain for discussion.

A football club up for sale, securing short-term funding from a finance company rather than a bank, and a bottom line debt that now stands at a whopping £182.1million.

I can’t remember a build-up to a derby against Blackburn Rovers in which matters on the pitch have been so sparsely discussed.

After funding the Premier League dream, Eddie Davies will walk away for a fraction of the headline figure that has sent chills down the spines of many a Whites fan for years. One wonders if it has also scared away a few potential investors?

Some reports suggest £30million would be enough for the Little Lever born businessman to cut ties with the club he bankrolled to UEFA Cup campaigns and unparalleled Premier League success.

Considering the assets still owned that price looks a snip, but then he was never going to recoup the full amount, particularly in the Championship.

However cheap that price may seem, Wanderers have found out in the last year that selling a football club is not an easy task.

Each week another rumour spreads around town. Russian money, Indian money, Middle Eastern investors, Thai consortiums, and yet no-one has really got past the ‘tyre-kicking’ stage.

The responsibility for finding the right buyer has been entrusted to Phil Gartside, almost the last man standing at the Macron right now.

Whether fans like it or not, the chairman has propped the club up for some time from within. He also remains adamant that Davies’s legacy will not be passed on without due diligence.

A wild rumour passed round in midweek that Gartside had stepped down from his post – one that certainly amused the man himself. I’m sure there will come a time when he steps aside, but I doubt it will happen until he is completely satisfied the club is in a safe pair of hands.

As we reported a few days ago, Wanderers agreed a 12-month loan with Nucleus Commercial Finance in lieu of a bank overdraft.

It isn’t the first time they have sought this kind of deal – known as a debenture – but it does provide further evidence of how hard it will be to find finance without the guaranteed safety cushion of parachute payments.

And that means the squeeze on Neil Lennon’s transfer budget is unlikely to loosen any time soon.

I get asked all the time, how did it get this bad? As if there is some kind of sinister plot to be uncovered. The truth is, it’s all there in black and white.

Wanderers spent beyond their means because Davies’s backing allowed it.

The watershed moment came in 2006, which was the last time the club reported a slender profit. For each of the intervening nine years there has been a loss.

In 2007 it was £2m, 2008 £8m, 2009 £13m, 2010 £35m, 2011 £26m, 2012 £22m, 2013 £50.7m, 2014 9.1m, 2015 £9.1m.

In 2006 the wages to turnover ratio – i.e. the money paid out in wages compared with the money made by the company – stood at 62 per cent. That is roughly the amount that UEFA president Michel Platini has considered capping clubs in the past, with little success.

At the time, former chief executive Allan Duckworth warned that this level would be “unlikely to be sustainable in the long term.”

By 2010 that figure stood at 86 per cent, and in the first season after relegation to the Championship it was a whopping 107 per cent. Even after attempt to curb costs, Wanderers were still spending 90 per cent of their turnover on wages, according to the 2014 accounts.

In the last 18 months the economy drive has really kicked into gear. The wage bill has come down below £20m for the first time in 15 years, and that has certainly not been without its sacrifices.

Around 70 staff have been made redundant or had their contracts terminated since relegation, which has hit the club extremely hard. Some very good people have left the building.

Putting it bluntly, today’s Macron Stadium is a shell of a place compared to the hive of activity it was five years ago, and I take my cap off to the people that have dug in and kept it going under difficult circumstances.

Fans are upset at the fact a decade in the top flight has amounted to nothing financially, and Wanderers cannot argue that some of their transfer business stands up to fair criticism.

But Davies signed the cheques. And without them, it is difficult to see how Bolton could have reached the heights they did.

When it became clear that they could no longer be reliant on Davies’s investment Wanderers took a conscious decision to try and stand on their own two feet, nevertheless it still costs nearly £10m a year to run a football club.

That’s the reality facing anyone who wants to step into Davies’s shoes. Rewards in the Premier League are huge, but getting there is expensive too.