Nice opinion piece. It’s clear you detest Latics which is your prerogative of course but you won’t find this ‘tichead’ who is also a staunch rugby fan giving any praise whatsoever to the administrators for how they’ve handled things.

Don't think they'll get any credit from Lisa Nandy either

The parliamentary privilege speech will be very interesting.

That may have led to this interview

Don’t detest Latics at all. But I detest the huge chip on the shoulder many of their fans have.

My point was the admins had an almost impossible task, one that beat admins at bury and Macclesfield, despite Latics carrying more debt and ongoing losses than those clubs.
So I don’t really get what the criticism is about! Yes they haven’t given detailed information but that’s the nature of the beast and dealing with NDAs. Beyond that they’ve tried everything and finally found a buyer at the 11th hour.

Very difficult to sell if what you’re selling isn’t very attractive and a substantial loss making proposition. Bahranis are essentially signing themselves up for 5mil losses a year for likely league two football, just to stand still. If they’re ambitious for future promotion even more. Got to have deep pockets for that.

What have the admins done that can actually be substantiated?

Latics have been ran the exact same way as we are. Accounts are totted up at the end of the season and the owner covers any gaps. If IL does what their owners did then we will be no better off and with no stadium or assets in a steuggling sport we won't be a very good sale either aside from our name so people in glass houses etc.

Ok ill bite, if they are legit and done the best for the club, why didnt they accept IL's bid as it was more than they sold it for? 4 months later when they have got all they can from it have they sold it for less than the bids that were tabled in Dec/Jan?

Very different context tho. IL generally covers operating losses (if there are any) of a couple of hundred thousand a season. Latics are still haemorrhaging money at a rate of 15k per week, 5mil per season, down from over a million a month.
Two very different situations. We are largely financially stable.

That’s exactly my point! IL bid was just for the ground. He was initially interested in Latics and a ‘sporting partnership’ but I expect saw what a bottomless pit of money they were and how they’d be a huge risk to him and WRL and balked.
The admins were only willing to do a deal on the stadium if the purchaser took on the burden of the football club and their 4-5mil per year running losses, hence leneghan couldn’t continue as there were no willing parties to take that risk.

Had the admins been willing to sell the ground alone they’d have got more than 2.3mil for it. The fact they didn’t shows they went far beyond the call of duty trying to save the football club for the community. If I were a creditor I’d be royally peeved at getting 25p on the pound as it’s obvious if they’d have liquidated the returns would have been better.

he also had a buyer for the club and not ground with him so was the whole package, bear in mind were they not selling the club for £1, the stadium losses werent far away from the footballs losses and will be more as it needs 5-10 million spending on it, so IL's bid was for both in reality and for more money....so why again did they not accept it?

Not if IL pulls the plug. Don't forget the plug was pulled when their income was £0.

As far as I'm aware, Latics paid all of their non football creditors every season (I know one of them) and their football creditors were paid on time as agreed. Staff were paid on time every time (again, I know someone who worked at the stadium) They spent more than they brought in (the owners must have agreed the budgets) but so does every club. Some of the clubs in the championship are really bad financially.

We will never know about the admins because they answer to nobody, but Lisa Nandy mentioned parliamentary privalege on a podcast this week and then days later that article came out. Sounds like someone could be trying to get their 2p in first. Or maybe their £2m.

Although the key point being is that there is a huge difference between plugging a gap of £5-12 million per season for latics, to 1-200,000 per year for Wigan? If Lenghan left tomorrow we wouldn't be bankrupt, we would just need to cut cloth or find other ways of increasing revenues. Its likely that without lenghan's input, we'd have one or two less big signings to ensure we were operating at break even, and would be at top 5-6 team, rather than a top 1-2. For latics, its difficult to find where that sustainable point lies outside of the premiership? Football is a very different proposition, particularly when you have a small fanbase.

Latics wouldn't have been bankrupt either, they would have sold 2 players and been close to breaking even. They had a player that Milan were willing to pay £10m for and they sold him for £2m.

This admin was done with their income at £0.

With our income at £0 and no IL how do we pay the wages?

You clearly don't like Latics as DannyT said. I don't particularly care for the majority of their fans, but am capable of being neutral when I need to be.

Everyone in football described them as a well run club. Theie football creditors were standard 'debts' for transfers as they don't pay in full. Knowing the people I know, they never had any issues paying money. The other clubs you mention didn't pay players and staff for months. That never happened at Latics.

They were well and truly shafted by their owners and have continued to be since and I hope Lisa Nandy or anyone else is able to bring it to light.

From a Wigan RL perspective, I wouldn't want anyone other than IL running us, but to think we would be fine if he decided he wasn't putting in a single penny more (and put us straight into administration) is naive at best.

Far from it. I would say exactly the same as you. I'm indifferent to them, but don't particularly care for a large group of their fans who have a ridiculous anti rugby chip on their shoulder.

I was looking at this neutrally, and factually, in terms of the operating losses of both businesses. Yes, i don't deny Wigan have them, but the operating losses for latics are much more substantial, and personally, i'm not sure how they get away from that to be sustainable or even close to sustainable in the future? I guess the only real option is on sale of players as you say.

I don't doubt they were shafted by their previous owners, who overnight decided they would no longer fund them and withdrew their support. I hope Nandy does shed some light on it. But my original point was around the mud thrown at the admins, who by the look of things have worked miracles to keep the club in business - reducing debts and selling a pretty unattractive business proposition during a pandemic. Generally I feel their fans have had an inability to recognise this and point fingers of blame without fully understanding facts.....something which we regularly see in the bile and nonsense they chuck our way!

Also have never said we would be 'fine' if leneghan put us in administration and withdrew funding......just that the 'gap' between operating losses and break even is much less to bridge for Wigan RL than it is for Latics.

But that is the nature of football I guess rather than a Wigan Latics problem per se, due to over inflation of player wages to excessive and unsustainable levels.....In the current climate I think there will be dozens of clubs that go to the wall in the next few years until excessive player wages are brought under control. There are players in Latics league still earning 10-15k per week

That's ridiculous when the quality of players in that division is distinctly average and average crowd levels and incomes for most (apart from your big hitters like Sunderland etc) are comparable or less than SL levels......We'd go under in 5 minutes if we had to play players at that rate, so in that respect I feel for them.

Latics operating costs are mainly wages I believe. If they decide they don't want to compete anymore and are happy as a L1 club then they'll be fine. Close the academy and they would probably be pretty well off at that level.

They may make the odd trip to the championship but they'd find it tough if they didn't pay the wages at that level which is where an owner comes in.

Similar to rugby and a club trying to win the league using 50% of the cap.

Latics just posted their results - £7.7m loss in 12 month period to 30 Jun 22. Wages £13m - 156% of total income.

IL made a shrewd move in not buying them.

Football in general doesn’t seem sustainable as things stand. The wages are insane and not just in the prem. That Latics squad is really average and has many players not good enough for Championship football IMO and it’s costing that!

The new owners pockets will be tested and there is no sign of them having the ability to create the type of football club that makes shrewd signings of younger players and then sells them on for profit. All the signings are either free transfer of older players (with no sell on value) or loans, so money just goes out on wages and nothing much is likely to come in. I don’t think the club has a single player they could sell on for more than a few hundred grand.

Not trying to be pedantic but that wage bill is for 2021/2022 not the one that's in the championship
So they were paying approx 13million in League 1 (possibly of which 10/11m would have been on players wages from what I was told).

7.7 MILLION LOSS is a lot no wonder they are bottom of the 2nd divison

[i[uMods i did not submit this post some one has used my user name
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Hi mate, not a mod but are you sure?

this is a revived thread, so you could have made the post 2-3 years ago when the thread was more active and relevant?

oops just checked the date when i posted Tue Jul 07, 2020 11:35 pm

Went to the Jason Robinson night on Tuesday, Rads mentioned that the club have built a new trophy cabinet in the arena upstairs and are in the process of moving all trophies and memorabilia out of the DW.

Also mentioned a new bar upstairs, named the '1872 bar' has been created as well.

Let's just keep doing our thing.

Saw a post on the other forum where someone had said the trophies had been removed from the stadium. Makes sense now why they always seem to appear in the fan village.

The cabinet in the stadium must be almost as empty as Warrington's trophy cabinet now.