BOLTON Wanderers are looking for a new manager today after Colin Todd sensationally left the club.

Six weeks into his fifth season in charge of team affairs, the former England international resigned as a deal was being concluded to sell star midfielder, Per Frandsen, to Division One rivals Blackburn Rovers for £2.25 million.

Untenable

Todd, who recommended that the Danish international should not be sold, is understood to have told his directors that his position had become untenable.

He has grown increasingly frustrated by the financial constraints imposed since the club's failure to secure a return to the Premiership last season.

He has been unable to strengthen his squad, having been told to unload before recruiting new players. He had to release former captain Scott Sellars in the close-season, when the club could not afford to take up an option on his contract, was unable to pursue any of the five players he had short-listed as summer recruits, and was recently prevented from signing a player on loan to tide him over a manpower shortage.

Jeopardy

The timing of the Frandsen sale appears to have been the last straw and, while the Dane was undergoing a medical at Ewood Park this morning before completing the formalities of his transfer, the manager who signed him from FC Copenhagen for £300,000 in July 1996 was at Wanderers' Euxton training headquarters telling his players and staff that he was leaving the club.

There had been speculation that 50-years-old Todd had been given just six games to steer Wanderers on a promotion course and that one win in seven league games had put his position in jeopardy.

But he appeared to be drawing a line in the sand two-and-a-half weeks ago when, after Frandsen had almost single-handedly rescued a point for Wanderers in a 3-3 draw with Birmingham, he said losing the influential midfield player would be "one of the biggest disappointments of my managerial career".

Ironically, Todd's departure comes the day after Burnden Leisure plc - Wanderers' parent company - finally reached an agreement to sell the old Burnden Park site, a move which eases the financial pressures on the club.

But it does not appear to have satisfied the manager, who has been told the £6.75 million which will eventually be raised by the sale of the 13-acre site to Orbit Investments - the developers of the Middlebrook complex which includes the Reebok Stadium - must be used to reduce a £6.75 million stadium development loan.

Todd, who was brought to Wanderers when Bruce Rioch became manager in June 1992, coached the club to two promotions in three years. When Rioch quit to manage Arsenal after clinching a Premiership place in 1995, Todd teamed up with his former Derby County team-mate, Roy McFarland in a joint management role.

He assumed sole control when McFarland left in January 1996 and, after relegation that season, immediately steered Wanderers back to the Premiership with a record-breaking Division One Championship only to be relegated again after just one season - on goal difference.

Defeat by unfancied Watford in the Play-off Final last May saw the purse strings tightened and ultimately led to another managerial casualty.

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