We had a 3 year rent break. You’ll notice it dropped 2012-13 then went back up to around the same amount after 3 seasons.
Funny how the drop in rent coincided with Dean Smith putting together one of the best teams we’ve seen for some years. Coincidence, maybe.
For the sake of objectivity and being fair and balanced - one of the reasons given for the rent increasing annually “at a market rate” is because there has supposedly been reverse investment back from the pension fund at various times. So how much in total has come the other way? Also, how much of Bonser’s personal interest free loan(s) to the club are still outstanding? And has he ever made any gifts or payments out of his own pocket?
That’s not even taking into consideration what the investment given for e.g. the video advertising board, has given back in revenue (yes, I know, we’d get even more of that revenue to keep if we didn’t have to pay the rent - but could we have raised the money to put it up without involving the pension fund at all?)
I’m not saying that everybody is wrong about him and it probably is time for a change (although be careful what you wish for!), but there are claims flying about of him having taken £10M+ out of the club, yet these figures show it to be closer to £6.5M, and taking off the above would make it an even smaller figure - which averaged out over the last 20 odd years would mean he’s not quite the marauding pillager that lots of people like to paint him as.
Even if you ignore what he/the fund have contributed, and the revenue streams he’s helped create, and just take the figure of £6.5M and add the whole lot of it to our budget for just this season (playing side only - not squandering it on superfluous things like office staff, ground improvements, kit, chip fryers, a more experienced manager, or whatever) then it still wouldn’t put us in the top 3 for League 2 this year - and given that Scunthorpe are, it wouldn’t have guaranteed success either.
It seems to me that the problem isn’t so much Bonser or the rent but the fans attitude towards him. It was the same when Wheldon as in charge (more than 40 years ago fans were moaning about lack of ambition and chanting “Where’s the money gone?”) and to a lesser extent (after the honeymoon period of free turkeys and the promises of big investment) Ramsden too.
In fact let’s face it, it’s been more or less the same old story since 1888!
A very fair post there mate and I agree these things need to treated in some sort of context but what your thoughts don’t really include is the lack of investment made by the owner into the club during that time
Yes,he’s of course we’ll noted for his PF arrangements etc (and in fairness the loans in whatever context they ever existed) but as an owner who is supposedly a fan, he has done little or nothing in respect of investing in the future legacy of the club…
The land/ground was acquired/built to facilitate what he could take OUT of the club not what he might put in and this is the pivotal point in my opinion
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I very nearly did it include that very point - the main gripe with him (and to be fair, others before him at Walsall - and lots of other chairmen and many other clubs) is that he’s got short arms and deep pockets. His philosophy has always been live within your means rather than you have to speculate to accumulate. It means we still have a club every year but apart from the odd sortie into the ratified air of the Championship, we are always going to be mid to lower League 1 with more than the occasional dip into League 2.
On the other hand, if someone did come in and splash the cash, could our fan base sustain the club if the gamble failed?
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Thank you Phil the Saddler
Understandable AWT…
Our problem is we definitely fall into the short arms and deep pockets category of owner…
My dad always said marry a woman with small hands which I understood but he never mentioned anything about being wary of football chairmen with short arms and deep pockets… 
At the last fans meeting Gamble suggested the pension fund had contributed £2.5 million over the years to the club with the rent increasing at times to cover this.
Wasn’t clear if this included the money leant to the club after the ITV Digital collapse or on top of that for the bonser suite, Gilbert Alsop stand, digital sign.
That is a very odd way of looking at things.
If Phil’s list is correct Bonser’s pension fund has taken £6,825,000 from the club since 2000. Add in the previous five years and the total is probably around £7.5M. But that does not allow anything at all for inflation. Using CPI to adjust each year to its current value of the rent comes to a total of £8,382,000 paid since 2000 and about £9M since 1995. The average rent per year adjusted for inflation is £441,158.
Had Bonser done the right thing by the club and insisted that WFC buy its ground in 1995, the club would also own an asset worth many millions, instead that asset belongs to the Bonser Pension Fund, so the amount taken from WFC by Bonser is far higher than the £10M+.
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I believe we still owe Bonser circa £2 million in loans.
Which if that’s the case, it blows a hole in the “well run club” argument. How can we be well run and living within our means if we’ve run up that debt?
It’s been said that it’s because he bailed us out after ITV Digital collapsed but I remember Whalley proclaiming at the time we wouldn’t be affected because we didn’t spend money we don’t have and our commercial revenue would protect us.
It appears the “well run club” narrative is based solely on us posting a meagre profit every season. It ignores the fact that everything on and off the pitch appears to have been neglected for years and we’re now reaping the consequences. 
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Those “contributions” were not gifts to club, but loans which are shown in the club accounts as directors’ loans.
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Not forgetting that the money invested in a diverse portfolio of equity, bonds etc, etc over 20 years would have more than trebled in value.
Mate you make some fantastic points.
Unfortunately Bonser had £20 in his wallet and now the fans know about it they are wondering why he hasn’t put an extra £1 into 20 of the squads wages.
Bernie 
Exactly! The spiral we’re in means in a few years we could very well be posting a nice, small profit but plying our trade in the Walsall Sunday Pub League.
Well run club my arse!
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Agreed. Any club could break even and fork out 450k rent every year if it chose not to provide a competitive playing budget for the level it was at.
There is so much more to ‘well run’ than breaking even.
I seem to remember that in some years we only broke even after a directors loan so the figures are meaningless.
“We” break even, whereas The Bonser family make half a mill plus profit each each
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