Bolton chairman Phil Gartside admits 'mistakes' were made at the club after the departure of Sam Allardyce at the end of the 2006/7 season.Allardyce quit the Reebok Stadium in April 2007 and was replaced as manager by his assistant Sammy Lee soon afterwards.

However Lee won just one of his 11 games in charge before being sacked in October.

As a result, Wanderers ended up in a Premier League relegation scrap and only just avoided the drop to the Championship.

Gartside told the club website: "It was always going to be difficult changing a manager after eight years and follow it with the success that we'd had.

"Change always brings about a disturbed situation and that's what we got. I think having tried to manage it by switching from one manager to a guy who'd been with us for three years, had the same philosophy, and would hopefully follow the same system. But it didn't work and we then had to make another change that was always going to be difficult.

"The decision to appoint Sammy Lee was taken on the basis that we wanted stability and I was trying to buy stability because at that time, because unbeknown to everybody else in the outside world, we were already starting to lose several members of staff even though we'd had an agreement not to.

"It was a case of trying to buy that stability back and retain the rest of the staff that were still here. In the long run it didn't work, the rest of the staff still left but that was a mistake trying to buy that stability."

It has also emerged that, following the sale of France striker Nicolas Anelka to Chelsea for £15million in January, Bolton made bids for two forwards from French Ligue 1 - St Etienne's Bafetimbi Gomis and Toulouse's Johan Elmander.

The Trotters were quoted around £21million for Elmander during the winter transfer window, but have since signed the Sweden international for around half that price this summer.

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