PHIL Gartside did not know it at the time but the stranger he met at Old Trafford almost 12 years ago would become the biggest individual benefactor in the history of Bolton Wanderers.

Gartside was there that afternoon in his capacity as a director of Wanderers, who were playing arch-rivals Manchester United in a 4th round FA Cup tie.

The result (Phil Neal's gallant side lost 1-0 to a Mark Hughes goal 11 minutes from time) was obviously disappointing but it turned out that he had something very much in common with the businessman introduced to him as a guest of Sir Rowland Smith, the then chairman of Manchester United plc. They were both lifelong Wanderers' fans.

Thus began the friendship that rekindled Eddie Davies' passionate interest in his home town club and which has since led to him becoming the club's biggest shareholder.

Born and raised in Little Lever and educated at Farnworth Grammar School, one of his proudest boasts - like so many other schoolboys of his age - was to rattle off the names of the 1958 FA Cup winning team.

Now he owns 30 per cent of the club's parent company, Burnden Leisure, a holding that effectively gives him the biggest say in how the club is run. So when he confirms that Sam Allardyce will not have a pot of gold to strengthen his squad when the transfer window opens in January, Whites fans had better believe it.

Eddie Davies OBE, the multi-millionaire boss of the Isle of Man based multi-national Strix company, has ploughed more of his personal wealth into Wanderers than anyone else in the club's 125-year history - a fact acknowledged by Gartside, who as chairman of the company and the club, has the full support and confidence of his majority shareholder.

But he is offering no blank cheques for Wanderers to gamble on short-term success. His aim is to secure the club's long-term stability.

"We have been trying to stabilise the position," he explains. "It is our mission to put the club on a proper financial footing and to stay in the Premier League."

Wild tabloid speculation has described Eddie Davies as Wanderers' answer to Jack Walker, the man who bankrolled Blackburn's Premiership title success of 1994-95. But, generous though he is and with a keen interest in seeing a successful academy established, he is not providing a pot of gold for transfers.

Instead, he advocates the sensible business approach rather than the high-risk, spend, spend, spend strategy that has seen so many clubs come a cropper on the cash front. He does it from a distance, preferring to use his influence behind the scenes, and although having trebled his shareholding (three-times greater than any other other investor) nothing changes.

"I do adopt a low profile," he confirms, "but I have a keen interest in how the club is run and I believe there is no other way to live than the way we are operating at the moment. We've got to be realistic ... people who have run football clubs in the past have not been too concerned about the long term. Their interest has been in short-term results. But, if you only look short-term and don't worry about the future, there may be no football club and no future.

"Look at the problems Bradford City have had as a result of putting players on long term contracts - football disaster leads to financial disaster.

"Hopefully, we can continue to play in the Premier League. We don't have aspirations to win it at this moment in time but we do have aspirations to stay in the league and create a sound financial base from which we can slowly improve our position."

The latest financial report, which will be put to shareholders at Thursday's annual meeting, show Burnden Leisure to have debts in excess of £30 million - largely down to borrowing to build the Reebok Stadium and the De Vere Whites Hotel. That makes life difficult for Gartside and his directors to fund Sam Allardyce's transfer dealings so, out of necessity, the manager has adopted a strategy of using loans and short-term contracts to reinforce his squad - a route he will continue to go down for the foreseeable future.

Unlike at Manchester City, where Kevin Keegan is rumoured to be at odds with his chairman over the club's willingness to commit more cash to transfers, the men at the top at Wanderers all appear to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

"I've known Phil for some time," Davies says. "We've worked together on this business model and Sam's bought into it. He's a realist, he knows the constraints he has to work under; he understands and he's prepared to work under those constraints.

"It is true that we have not bought any players of any significance for two years and before that we'd sold virtually two teams because we had to," Davies explains. "But the way we are doing business with short term contracts and loans gives us flexibility: if they help us to stay up, we can consider keeping them; if the worse comes to the worst and we are relegated then we don't have any long-term financial commitment.

"Economically it makes sense. Just plucking figures out of the air - if you buy a player for £4 million and commit yourself to paying him a contract of £1m a year for three years, that's a £7 million commitment that may or may not come off. But you could sign a player on loan - a much better player - for £1.5m, who could give you much better results.

"Things are in a state of flux and, at this moment in time, relegation is a daunting prospect for any club but it's not just the clubs at the bottom, who are having a difficult time. Even some of the big Premier League clubs have financial problems - we are all well aware of the debts Chelsea and Leeds have."

Davies, who commutes to games from his home in the Isle of Man, became a Wanderers' director in October 1999 and joined the board of Burnden Leisure in June 2000. The latest published figures show his holding last June to be 56.7 million - 29.7 per cent of the company's ordinary share capital.

Looking back on that first meeting, he recalls: "It's a funny old world ... I'd lost contact with my home territory and suddenly there I was, a Bolton man talking to a director of the Wanderers."

As Phil Gartside puts it, the Boltonian he met that day is now "living the dream".