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Gartside and his board of directors had only budgeted for the club to finish in 17th place so the surprise of sitting in a comfortable mid table position of 12th means more scope for the manager Sam Allardyce to work with for next season despite the revenue from the television companies being less than in previous seasons.
"A couple of million will make a lot of difference to our planning for next season. Television monies are not going to be quite as much next year. If we can make up that shortfall by finishing a couple of places higher, we can look forward with a lot more confidence. Having planned to finish 17th this season, we might be planning to finish a bit further up the table." Gartside said
The Bolton chairman also confirmed that he may be tempted to get out the chequebook to help Allardyce build up his squad even further than in previous years to add to what is already becoming a decent squad containing the likes of Jay-Jay Okocha, Youri Djorkaeff, Ivan Campo and Bruno N'Gotty. However the problem for Gartside is that players will want to play in European football, something which the Wanderers cannot offer at this moment in time but the chairman has enough faith in his manager to pull yet another star name or a number of star names to the Reebok Stadium this summer, both either from at home or abroad.
"We have to be a bit more adventurous. We'll try and bring players in on the basis we have done in the past. But, if we can't, we'll look out there to see if there are players we can afford to buy. We are thinking a bit more positive about that. Sam's been to see quite a few big players, some big names, in Europe and here as well. He's still got some hard miles to run because some of the players are involved in European football. It's not going to be easy, if they are playing Champions League football, to persuade them to come here and play mid-table Premier League. But we're working hard at it and we've had success in bringing in quality players before." he added