PARACHUTE payments owed to Wanderers by the Premier League for the 2014/15 season have been used to settle an outstanding overdraft at Barclays Bank, the club have confirmed.

The short-term lending facility, which according to the last set of financial accounts was worth £5million, with a working capital facility of between £3m and £5m, was agreed two years ago and was due for renewal in June.

The repayment has not come out of the blue for Bolton – although it perhaps goes some way to explaining their failure to land striker Lukas Jutkiewicz, whose move to Burnley was officially announced yesterday.

It is the second time that the Whites have used Premier League cash to fund their bank payments, having also followed a similar procedure after relegation to the Championship two years ago.

The amount owed to Barclays represents only a fraction of their overall debt, listed as £163.8m in the last set of figures published back in December 2013.

The vast majority of money owed is to club owner Eddie Davies and his company Moonshift Investments.

Quoted by one national newspaper yesterday, Wanderers chairman Phil Gartside said of the repayment to Barclays: “The funding requirement has been met.”