if you seriously think that wigan don't need the money, then let it be on your head if and when it comes out that we are skint for next year and beyond despite losing 2/3 big earners at the end of 2018.

this isn't a personal dig at gelling, this is a concern about the club. have you seen the state of our finances? have you heard the news coming out of the club about how close to the cap we are and how little money we have to spare and how much we need to drive ideas for new business and income?

yeah i'm not bothered at all. not a bit.

fans who seem to think its all about what is on the pitch are the problem, not me who has a genuine concern.

This is just plain silliness.

We already know we have a chairman who pumps hundreds of thousands into the club whenever there's a shortfall, sometimes on an annual basis (yes ... that would be the 'complete numpty' you referred to a few posts ago).

Compared to that, how much do you think we'd get for Gelling? If anything at all?

The fact he's gone to Widnes must tell you something ... namely that no one with any cash was interested.

As for the three big earners we've lost, we've already replaced two of them, with maybe another to come. On top of that, you accuse others of not having seen the club's finances, but then neither have you.

Sorry, this is nothing but blatant misinformation and scaremongering. You say you've got the club's best interests at heart, but it feels to me as if the opposite is true.

firstly i'm pretty sure it isn't IL who sits down with the players to negotiate their contracts. secondly again, i'm not having a personal dig at Gelling, I have already commented that I rated him, but he is simply yet another example of a player getting out of contract and then shortly after having a change of heart (or realising the grass wasn't greener). wigan have been bitten in this manner too many times and only recently and finally seem to have realised returning players aren't worth it and that agents will try anything to get you out of or a new contract.

so we've replaced ST with ZH, probably half the wage ST was on.

Greenwood for J Tomkins, same again.

where is the spare cash? if its not going on bateman, where is it and who is it going to be spent on? have you any information on that to appease me yet? if not, what right do you have to blast my post?

and actually yes I've looked at their finances, being in the finance industry myself I am strongly concerned. Companies House shows £7M in 2016, and off the top of my head with a bit of quick thinking i can sum up about £5.5M tops, yet we are being told we are not making profit and going on grand ventures to try and bring in more money? How?! and why?

I have nothing but the best interests for the club, i'm merely someone bold enough to come on here to fight tooth and nail with all of you internet geeks about it. I'm not scaremongering, i'm trying to find answer which by the way none of you can provide. you all come back with your high and mighty responses with little actual evidence or substance in them so to have the gall to mock my posts when yours are no better or worse is quite laughable.

you then have the indecency to suggest that I should drop the "crusade" i'm on, but will no doubt be the first to complain about lack of fans, lack of visits to the forum and the downturn of fans at the game.

have a word with yourself before coming back at we thinking your quick wit will look good.

I hope you are ok with this Mrs. Cruncher.

IL's business acumen is proven. You're just a nickname on a forum whose insights are worth squat.

The fact you've chosen to draw your battle lines over the colossal transfer we we didn't get for Anthony Gelling tells me all I need to know.

Go and find another hobby horse that's less likely to chuck you off.

as are yours, it would appear.

I thought your response would be nothing but more name / character calling, rather than any actual detail.

the fact you are totally unaware that I've been commenting on this subject for more than 12 months via numerous threads tells me you have nothing significant to offer.

the fact that you have failed to understand, despite my quite clear comments, that this is not just about Gelling, also tells me you are quite happy to choose your fight when you think you can be clever with it when really all you are doing is nit-picking the finer detail to try and feed your ego and put someone down.

I really don't care that you think I have no reason to think what I think. what I do care about is the club, and I don't like it when it is continually proven to be on the back end of dumb deals and bad decisions.

I suppose you don't care that Sam Tomkins is going on a free next year either. I suppose that as long as you are all right and the team is 2nd in the league and the pitch looks nice and green, all must be well eh?

now kindly let a concerned man continue to be concerned if he wants, if you don't agree fine, but there's no need to lambast it in such a manner that suggests you think i'm worthy of incarceration.

"I suppose you don't care that Sam Tomkins is going on a free next year either."

Just for clarity what do you mean by this Burt? What option did we have?

not that I care that he is off, but i'm pretty sure its quite easy to think right, this guys is worth a mint no matter what form he is in, lets secure his services for a bit longer so if one day he decides he wants to leave we get a nice bit of transfer money. short term loss for a long term gain? never heard of this? its not rocket science.

I used that as an example in relation to my comments about the poor handling of contracts in recent years.

I appreciate Sam was going whether we wanted it or not, but I can't help but feel a better direction on him over the last year or so and we could have profited from him more.

So you would keep players just in case another club wants to buy them for a transfer fee?

Thank god you aren't running our club.

But if you think you can do a better job why not drop your CV to Ian Lenagan?

So is 30-year-old Sam's price just going to keep going up and up then? Like a fine old wine is he going to get better and better with age, so that when he's say, 33, and we've been paying top dollar all those extra years just to have kept him here, we'll get it all back, and more, by commanding a staggering transfer fee which they'll all be queuing up to pay?

And on the basis that IL doesn't do things like this, you call him a numpty ... ?

This is crazy talk. I don't imagine any of us would make a better coach than Shaun Wane, but it doesn't stop us criticising him. And why not,that's what internet forums are for.

People have a right to express their views without getting shouted down.

No point in criticising Shaun Wane Wane unless you can coach better than him? Np point criticising Lionel Messi unless you can play better than him? Really? Is that a sensible attitude?

You say it's not rocket science and you claim to work in the financial sector but you'd be willing to pay a player around a third of a million a year on the off chance that someone would pay a transfer fee of what? £50,000? Does that make financial sense to you? And that's assuming anyone would be interested in a 30+ year old player with a transfer fee on his head in the first place! Where is the sense in this?

I really don’t know where you’re getting the ‘poor handling of contracts’ from? What evidence is there of any of it?

Tomkins has honoured his contract.
Bateman has honoured his contract
Gildart was managed well and given a contract of his worth.
Williams was retained as marquee thereby not going to Warrington
Isa & Tautai honoured their contract and signed new ones
Young players have earned peanuts until they earned bigger deals.
Lockers, Flower, Clubb all retained.
Leuluai, Burgess, Sarginson all brought back on realistic contracts.


This could go on. If you have any evidence of contracts being mismanaged, please share it.

The only criticism I have is how we jumped the gun to give GW a marquee contract. Yes he was playing well and was outstanding but I still feel he needed a few more years of continual improvement before being given that size of contract.

The ST marquee I can understand in a way; before he left he was literally our marquee player without the contract. Most, if not all, Wigan fans would have been very angry if he would have come back and gone to say Warrington who offered more money than we did.

That being said about GW, I do believe a new coach will reinvigorate him and this marquee debate will be put to bed and forgotten about.

Other than the, I suppose “slight” criticisms I'm with you on the contractual non-issue.

My understanding with GW is that it wasn't so much a case of jumping the gun, as of having to act quickly and decisively to ward off the very silly offers made by clubs like Warrington.

There is always a counter-explanation as to why the club makes controversial decisions.

I'm sure the likes of WiganBurt and Dave O would have gone utterly ballistic if we'd lost George Williams.

I think hindsight has a big part to play here, at the time, GW was indeed "Ripping it up"... I don't think he has quite set the league on fire as we might have expected, and the usual suspects have found a stick to beat their usual targets.