Fabrice Muamba: Where's the leadership at Bolton?
- Published
Bolton Wanderers' leadership has been questioned by former player Fabrice Muamba.
The Championship side are £172.9m in debt and owe £2.2m in unpaid taxes but have avoided going under.
"How do you reach £170m of debt? When you hit £50m, alarm bells should start going off. I'm not here to point the finger but how did it get this bad?" he told Newsbeat.
The case has been adjourned until 22 February.
Bolton has been given extra time to either find a potential buyer or raise enough money to cover the club in the short term.
It would let them trade and make payments on the debts owed to Revenue and Customs and other creditors.
Muamba raised concerns about where money made by the club was going.
"You wonder if we were blindsided all the time or were we spending more than we had?
"We sold Gary Cahill to Chelsea for £7m and I'm not sure if we invested all that money into the squad," he says.
"If we didn't then I'm sure that could have been paid towards the debt."
Fabrice Muamba played for Bolton between 2008 and 2012. His football career ended after suffering a cardiac arrest on the pitch shortly after this picture was taken
It's not just the financial issues he blames management for.
It's also the performance of the players.
Bolton are currently bottom of the Championship and were held to a 1-1 draw in the FA Cup third round by non-league Eastleigh.
They were relegated from the Premier League in 2012 after 11 seasons in the top division.
"At the end of the day football is about leading boys and making sure they know what they're doing," he tells Newsbeat.
"I know some players that live really close to the stadium which shows how much the town and place means to them.
"Regardless of how small your budget is, your job as a coach or manager is to lift them up and make sure they can perform at the best of their ability.
"Half of that squad aren't even performing at the level I know they can play."
Sometimes he finds it painful to watch The Trotters.
"I watched an FA Cup game and I had to turn it off after 20 minutes because it was that hard to watch.
"I saw them play against Brentford but left after 35 minutes.
"You just wonder where the leadership is here?"
For more stories like this one you can now download the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Newsbeat app straight to your device. For . For .