You literally can't criticise the club for anything on here without the "Wigan fans moan about anything" brigade having a go. Wigan have just won the double and reading between the lines we have struggled to obtain a main shirt sponsor (the lateness of the shirts being released plus the one year deal). Wev also got a local estate agents as the sponsor.

If it is wigans policy to promote local companies then fair enough, but I think if there was a blue chip company offering a 3 year deal the club would snap their hands off for it. Personally I think the club is run very well on most areas, but obtaining a shirt sponsor is definitely an area that requires improvement.

Nail on head

i agree some fans moan about anything and everything becomes the managements fault, but this one is a complete fail and no amount of sugar coating can stop that. Be interesting to see what the goal was for sponsorship and what we have actually achieved.

How the can you possibly know that it's a complete fail when (correct me if I'm wrong) you have no idea at all about how much money was exchanged or what other options were on the table? I don't usually like to take the 'they must know best' line but IL is a millionaire businessmen and managed to get Warner brothers to sponsor us for a game last season at fairly short notice, making god knows how much money off the 'Superman Shirts' into the bargain.

At risk of sounding like a happy clapper, I think in the time he's been here he has more than earned the benefit of the doubt about decisions we don't know the ins and outs of. Wasn't he being criticised as nothing but a moneygrabber who was only out to "trouser money" 3 months ago?

There you go, if Warner Brothers would sponsor us why settle for a local housing association?

How many bought the shirt because it looked great with the Superman logo on? Would they have bought the shirt if it had Brenda's Barms on the front?

read any of my post and you will see i back IL with pretty much everything but on this occasion its not good enough, by the way i am not even blaming IL its not his job to get a sponsor its the marketing and commercial departments job. All for a local based company sponsoring the club but only if their big enough such as JJB back in the day. seriously how much money could they offer for the sponsorship? compared to companies which have 50million+ every year for marketing?

Evidently Warner Brothers wouldn't sponsor us for a full season, or not at a decent amount of money at any rate. You can't seriously believe we had the option of someone of that calibre with a good amount of money on offer and IL turned it down. He's a shrewd businessman with a massive vested interest in making money for the club. He will surely have made this decision because it was the best option on offer. It's not like blue chip companies have generally been falling over themselves to sponsor RL clubs, have we considered that it's a very difficult thing to do, and that Emirates was a massive one-off?

No I don't think IL turned down an option of that size.

So your telling me 'Houses for Homes' is the best we can do?

The criticism isn't that larger offers from blue chip companies have been turned down in favour of this deal, it's that the Wigan RL brand should be able to attract the best deal possible from more notable sponsors, especially the year after we have just done the double. Nobody knows how much this deal is worth or what other offers were on the table, but on the face of it not enough has been done behind the scenes to attract sponsorship. It's also not the first time it's happened (the 2010 replicas being released without a sponsor because the deal with Mecca bingo hadn't been sorted, for example).

If something wasn't hard to do it wouldn't be worth doing. I am sure emirates didn't just turn up at warrington and said we want to sponsor you, it would of been a lot of hard work to get the right appointments and pitched hard. It just smacks some fans obviously as being a little bit lazy and not capitalizing on a fantastic brand.

The situation's quite simple ... anyone comes on here and takes the mickey out of Wigan RL is going to get short shrift from me, even if they are Wigan fans.

I find it hilarious that someone is moaning about being bullied when those who tried to stay positive during leaner times were given all kinds of stick by the professional whinge merchants. I was accused of being everything from a happy clapper to Ian Lenagan's wife because I wasn't calling for the heads of people who have subsequently gone on to win us trophies. One clown even went batsh7t because, after he accused the club chairman of theft, I had the nerve to single him out for criticism.

The behaviour of some Wigan fans on message boards is frankly embarrassing. Why they are surprised when people express annoyance with them is baffling.

Embarrassing? This thread or in general?