SLATE wiped clean and the stigma of heavy debt removed an exciting new era may be dawning at Bolton Wanderers – but for someone, the work is just beginning.

Eddie Davies has confirmed the next owner at the Macron Stadium will start life effectively debt free – news greeted with universal joy across the town on Monday night.

In scrubbing out that ugly top-line figure of £185million the Little Lever born lifelong fan has given his successor the best possible start. But buyers beware; the cost of restoring the Whites to the glory years they achieved under Davies’s guidance could be considerable.

It is only in the last 12 months, when the owner’s bankrolling could no longer be called upon, that many have realised what a financial burden a Championship club like Bolton can be.

With conservative running costs of £10m a year and significant investment needed immediately in the playing staff, the job of hopping into Davies’s hot-seat while it is still warm comes at a considerable cost.

For starters to proclaim Wanderers completely debt free is a slight misnomer.

Trevor Birch announced in his much-welcomed statement that the Whites Hotel carries with it a small loan. He also mentioned “change of control payments” which, presumably pertain to the short-term loan carried out earlier in the year with Nucleus Finance. They may also extend to the money put in by vice chairman Brett Warburton last December secured against the stadium.

In the grand scheme of things it is small beer considering the sums we have grown accustomed to in the last few years and it does not seem to have put people off getting involved.

We already know that ex-players like Dean Holdsworth and Stelios Giannakopoulos have formed their own investment groups, while much of the club’s official communication has hinted at other interest too.

The positive publicity gained in the last 24 hours might convince others to come forward too, with Birch confirming no party yet had exclusivity.

Questions still remain. Fans wonder how Davies can wipe off such an exorbitant amount of money. But so complicated has Wanderers’ financial structure been this last 12 years, it is almost impossible to say exactly how much he has ended up out of pocket and how much is effectively “paper debt”.

Birch claimed on Monday night the figure approached £175m when interest payments to his company Moonshift Investments were taken into consideration. More complex accounting terms like amortisation also come into play – with the suggestion being the top line figure that collected so many negative headlines was never truly that high.

One thing I don’t doubt for a second is that without Davies underwriting it all, Wanderers fans would not have seen the likes of Jay Jay Okocha, Youri Djorkaeff and Fernando Hierro grace the pitch in the Premier League glory days.

Had he and others not invested in 1999 the asset stripping of Colin Todd’s talented squad would surely have extended further and Sam Allardyce may not have been given the solid base from which to build again.

Neil Lennon’s squad is arguably in a worse state. He needs immediate funding to prevent the team slipping further and now faces his own mini-season before January to at least stay in touch with the sides above him. All of that will have to be done with the players in his existing squad.

After that it becomes a matter of how deep the new owner’s pockets really are. Preventing relegation is step one, building a team so they can reach a league with ample rewards would be step two, and neither come cheap.