ANY Wanderers fan can see there will have to be certain concessions in the coming months if this club is going to cure itself in the long term.

Cold, hard business decisions are being made by the new owners and there have already been causalities on the boardroom, coaching and playing front.

No one will say it until relegation has been mathematically confirmed but preparations are now being made for how the club bounces back. And as the saying goes, to make an omelette you have to break some eggs.

Given hardship suffered by Wanderers in the last 12 months there will be few tears shed by the changes at director level as Richard Gee left the building. Even a stalwart like Brett Warburton, who has been part of the fabric of the club for three decades, stepped down without ceremony.

In any other season the departure of Neil Lennon as manager would have registered as more of a shock to fans, given it came on Dean Holdsworth’s second day in the building.

I happen to know the new owner once dispensed with the services of 20 players on the same day in his early days at Newport County, so is not scared of making the big calls when necessary.

Packing off winger Liam Feeney to Ipswich Town on loan and refusing to pay the £100,000 payment to Liverpool for Jay Spearing’s 23rd appearance of the season was interpreted by some as an admission of relegation. To me it is more a case of accepting the inevitable and being realistic.

You have to feel on a personal level for Spearing, whose passion and commitment to the cause has been faultless throughout his time with the Whites.

The club cannot, however, carry wages like his – and many others like him – into League One next season. Paying that fee to Liverpool now would be like chucking it down a hole, and this club has done enough of that to last a lifetime.

Wanderers were guilty of not planning ahead when they toppled out of the Premier League, and worse still when Eddie Davies pulled his financial support. It is about time we started thinking a few steps ahead.

Southampton have been held up as a perfect business model, and the indications are that Wanderers’ young players will be asked to form the spine of the team that will almost certainly be plying its trade in League One next season.

That leaves nine games, starting with today’s trip to Bristol City, to decide who stays after relegation.

Phillips knows the younger players – perhaps the club – better than anyone around and so his appointment is a masterstroke.

He was badly treated by Phil Gartside and the board before the appointment of Dougie Freedman in 2012 and had been promised more time to make a case for the job full-time.

When Freedman left Phillips immediately withdrew his name from the running for caretaker manager, something which I know infuriated the chairman. It was a move quite out of character but shows how deeply he was upset at what had gone on two years earlier.

He returned and worked diligently at the academy, which despite stepping down a category and no longer mixing with the Manchester City and Uniteds, is looking in its best health for years.

Wanderers are in safe hands with Phillips regardless of what Holdsworth and Ken Anderson decide to do with the managerial hotseat this summer.

The new owners completed their first major task, paying the HMRC bill, which should buy them a little more grace from those who have been critical of their business plan or suspicious of their motives in taking over the club.

And they also played a blinder in bringing Peter Reid back to Bolton Wanderers, 33 years after he left Burnden Park as a player.

To fans a little older than I, Reid was a hero and his experience in the game since then makes him a valuable addition to the set-up for the rest of the season.

For starters, if Wanderers have adopted a losing mentality through this wretched season then someone like Reid can smack that right out of them.

Under Lennon it became all too easy to point to problems outside the dressing room when those inside were being ignored.

Equally, bringing back someone still held in such regard by Bolton fans might just give a well-time lift to fans who have had precious little to cheer about of late.

Yes, there are hard times ahead. But so long as fans feel part of the journey they can be surprisingly patient in times of hardship.