EUXTON came a long, long way from the collection of portable cabins that Colin Todd’s team once called home.

There was a time when the likes of Mark Fish, Eidur Gudjohnsen and Per Frandsen would report for training in a setting much less plush and polished than the one that greets players today.

By the time Jay-Jay Okocha and Youri Djorkaeff started strutting their stuff, things had improved slightly but it was only once Sam Allardyce had cemented a Premier League place that the air conditioned gyms and pools, state-of-the-art turf and professional offices followed.

How sad that a complex that had come to sum up the achievements of Bolton Wanderers matching the footballing elite has become the latest, and hopefully last casualty of the financial meltdown that has threatened the club’s very existence.

The timing of the deal, coming so close to a proposed takeover, makes little sense, other than illustrating just how panicky Wanderers had become.

The sale of the former ROF Chorley site to Wigan was rubber-stamped on the same day that Sports Shield were given exclusivity – which gives them sole rights to examine financial data and complete formalities within a given period of time – thus diminishing the club they were buying into. A penny for their thoughts?

Wanderers fans will be eager to know just where the money for this, and other land sales ends up. Yesterday we saw some very visible signs of financial housekeeping at Companies House as the various loans secured against assets were ticked off the list. But taking Euxton as a single example, the deal represents more than just laying hands on some ready cash. It is a concession that the Premier League days have been consigned to the distant past.

Allardyce was once embarrassed to show signings around the training base, and concentrated their sights on the pristine Reebok Stadium, as it was then called. He was keen to establish his own castle, however, building his famous war room where his cherished backroom staff turned Euxton into a well-oiled machine.

You could argue that in the Championship such luxury is unnecessary. And even in the Premier League days there was talk of moving on to a combined site at Lostock somewhere down the line.

This deal was not part of that plan, however, and it does not sit well with me at all.

The cryogenic chamber may have been switched off a while back, the security scaled back and some of the potted plants removed from around the reception but the complex was still Grade A.

Euxton had been a retreat under Allardyce but it came to mean different things to different managers I worked with.

Gary Megson would welcome you in with open arms, sit and chat over breakfast, invite wet-behind-the-ears local journalists like myself for a chat and a coffee in his office. Not the grumpy bloke often portrayed at all.

The training ground never felt more vibrant than it did when Owen Coyle was in charge. The former Whites boss was criticised for allowing his players too much recreational time but whereas the table tennis competitions, the darts, the snooker, the head tennis were all there — that camaraderie also provided comfort for players like Stuart Holden, Joey O’Brien, David Wheater or Chung-Yong Lee as they fought against injury. It also provided comfort in those uncertain days after Fabrice Muamba’s collapse, or following the tragic loss of Gary Speed.

Dougie Freedman brought an altogether more sterile approach to the training ground: “We are here to work,” he used to say. And he was right.

As the number of reporters press who attended weekly press gatherings dwindled in the Championship, we were ushered further away from the hustle and bustle. You were no longer able to shake players by the hand or say hello, as the few journalists who came to cover the club were packed away in a back room.

Neil Lennon has used the Macron as his auditorium, and like Allardyce prefers the training ground to be somewhere he can retreat and work with his players.

Though he may not say it in public, I cannot see him being happy that Euxton now belongs to a local rival. The latest bitter pill he has been forced to swallow.

But as I say goodbye to Euxton, I remember the happier times: Playing darts with Ricardo Vaz Te, ribbing Fred Barber about his ‘easy’ training routines, meeting Stu Holden on his first day at Bolton, learning about Gretar Steinsson’s garage in Switzerland, watching BBC Radio Manchester’s Wanderers reporter Jack Dearden eat a five-course breakfast and then do a radio interview, chatting with employee Christine in the security booth and fellow worker Liz in reception and just generally watching a football club function.

I’ll miss it, for sure.