As a club we are a shambles and leaderless.

Good businessmen do not let the rot set in like our club has done for the last few years. The sheer inability to resolve the Lam issue in the first year tells you everything you need to know about the current capabilities of IL and KR. I will be forever grateful for IL in buying the club when he did and turn it around but all that is gone now. New blood is needed at the top for 2022 to start the turnaround. IL hasn’t I suspect got the energy to do that or the resources so the drift will continue.

I love the club and literally haven’t slept after another “performance” that quite frankly wasn’t as good as inept.
I’m done with club until major changes at the top take place.
I won’t be getting a ST nor will I buy my sons a ST as I usually do for Christmas. I will give them the cash to buy one but I won’t be making any attempt to contact the club for tickets.

Next year will be worse.
We have signed 3 Aussies with zero experience and a player with no heart and the end of his career.
If KR had come to me with that plan for 2022 I’d have fired him on the spot. To get to the situation where those signings are best we can do due to cap restrictions is incompetence of the highest order. IL and KR have led that incompetence.

I suspect we will sign Miller with Hardaker going the other way.
Peet will be head coach
The team will be “tough” and the defence will be competent. The play will be joyless and played in near silence. The marketing if any actually takes place, will be pretty pointless with a pretty dire product.
The incredulous lack of communication with the fans will continue.
What little talent we have will look to leave.
The decline of Farrell and Bateman will continue.
The Ancient and Loyal will be back. After all the shoite and bluff about the “Warriors” for the 150th anniversary the badge will be rolled out as “an integral part of our dna” or some other shoite like that.
The gates will continue to fall and silence at the ground on match day will become almost deafening.
I suggest that IL and KR are incapable of avoiding any of the above.

I will watch more amatuer rugby where I can actually get a beer with little or no trouble and would you believe it actually enjoy the rugby.

IL’s and KR’s time has been and gone

He 100% wants to be the best club in the world. He's a Wigan fan first and foremost.

What he won't do is break the salary cap and pay for players that don't want to be here.

The guy has put at least £5m of his own money (the current debt, all to him) into making sure the club pays up to the cap (over it technically with subsidies for marquee etc) and is competitive including bankrolling the club to the tune of £2.5m during a pandemic. All this why his own fans cba to go to games and claim that he's cheap.

Some decisions around players haven't worked out as we'd hope, but his main mistake has been keeping Lam for 3 years. Prior to that we were the SL Champions.

He also wants the best for the sport. Some of what he says is controversial and upsets a few people but it's usually the clubs who cba doing anything other than collecting the sky money every year, which is going down because RL fans cba watching RL so sky put more money elsewhere like the NFL for example.

I wanna be really clear here - I'm not bashing IL. I like plenty of the stuff he's done and he's been a great owner. I'm also not calling him cheap either - how anyone can look at Robin Park and say that is beyond me.

For me tho until he does break the cap, or at least calls out the BS around it - he's not trying to make the club the absolute best version that it can be. He's playing to rules that, let's face it, are designed to work against Wigan. I'm not talking about fantasy signings here either. I'm talking about being able to retain every talent we want & sign experienced guys to balance it out.

At the min, he's spending money on youth scouting, development & facilities knowing that, ultimately, other clubs will get the benefit of it. That's wrong and not good for Wigan.

Like I said in my OP, why should we have to chose between giving KPP a raise and missing out on a quality player for the here and now too? It almost feels like that, at the min, we know we've got a good crop of lads but they aren't fully ready for a couple of years. We don't want to get rid of them, because like I said they are good lads, but we also can't afford loads of alternatives because we're paying to keep a future team together.

Wire would win it every year if they scrap the cap

I'd hate it too.

Is that better than what we have now tho?

Then surely the logic of what you saying, sarge, points to a smaller SL? Less clubs to share the player pool means better standards, right?

But good luck to Lenegan (or anyone else) getting that past the SL chairmen.