IL has said a couple of times now that whilst he will support the soccer where he can he has no interest in owning and running it.

Which latics fans cant see. They think him owning the ground means he owns the club.

Then again...most of them think latics own the stadium

Yep. It's not some innate anti-RL mentality that we're trying to reason with here. In most of these cases it's innate blind stupidity. And that's a much harder condition to cure.

So Whelan did at least do something good which did not involve his own pocket.

Great to know

Are you for real?

Whelan would have sold the Latics and the Stadium long before he did long before he did if it was losing money.

Remember, he is the man who sold them for a profit to the people in Hong Kong who did not put any money into the Latics or the Stadium and created the mess we have now which has not been helped by a second rate administration company who then sold them to another cowboy outfit from Spain.

And why are always so defensive of Whelan?

Disingenuous to say they put no money into Latics, they funded a £1M a month loss.

Are you for real?

Whelan would have sold the Latics and the Stadium long before he did long before he did if it was losing money.

Remember, he is the man who sold them for a profit to the people in Hong Kong who did not put any money into the Latics or the Stadium and created the mess we have now which has not been helped by a second rate administration company who then sold them to another cowboy outfit from Spain.

And why are always so defensive of Whelan?

Not initially. He said he was interested in bringing us all under one sporting partnership. Then I think he saw just how financially unviable they are, and I believe has only been interested in the stadium and finding a partner to take on latics since.

This is their most significant difficulty imo. Without the stadium they are worthless as they are not a sustainable business at any level....partly owing to the fact footballers are grossly overpaid at all levels to the detriment of the game, but also because there isn't the same level of interest in football in the town as there is in other areas, at whatever level they are competing.
So they are perennially competing with clubs who have much bigger resources due to larger fanbases. They are essentially a wakefield of football, and will always average 5-10k less crowd than every other team in their division, and run at a loss as a result.

In the championship they were losing 1m quid a month, hence why they collapsed as soon as the chinese stopped putting money into them. Even with their recent streamlining, and not much more than an academy team, they are projected to lose 5 mil over the next two years.

This means they are only attractive to two groups of people;
i) Rich fans - As a flight of fancy. Problem is, beyond Whelan there are not many interested in wigan athletic with that sort of money
ii) Overseas investors - essentially as a tax dodge, taking advantage of low UK corporation rates. I believe this was the reason the spanish were interested - 25-30% tax levels in spain vs 15% in the uk. Very easy to use latics as a vehicle to make money, offsetting their losses by running overseas profits through the football club ie/ inflated player transfers would have been easy for the spanish. I suspect this is also the reason the chinese bought in.

The problem is we're tied to that mess, because the stadium is tied to latics.....a conscious exit strategy by whelan, who knew as an entity latics were worthless, and it was only by selling them with the stadium would he realise any real value.

The chinese didn't buy a football club, they bought a stadium and a tax saving vehicle for 20million, but even they underestimated the huge hole latics' losses would cause and the impact this had on their entire group value....hence the offload and plunging them into administration.

Whelan lost millions on latics getting them to the premier league. But he wasn't bothered at that stage, as they were a vanity project to boost his ego!! Once he had achieved his dream of building a football club from essentially scratch and getting them to the premiership, he became much less interested and the money he was losing started to hurt. Hence his withdrawal from the club.
If you listen to some tics, they believe he took a lot of money back out of latics towards their latter days in the premiership....would be interesting to look at the clubs accounts and drawings to see if this is right. But whichever way, there came a time where he had achieved what he wanted to and didn't want to lose any more money, hence cleverly offloading them by selling them largely for what their assets were worth - exactly why he 'gifted' the stadium to the club....it wasn't a gift, it just gave him leverage to push the price up and get 20m back out, for a club that was otherwise largely worthless.

But of course whelan lost money. I expect he would have been losing 10-20 mil a season in the run up to getting them to the premiership, buying a team to realise his dream.

Why always so aggressive towards him? Oh yes, he sacked a member of your family didn't he.

Evidently did not smack you with the way you think like some Latics supporters that the sun shines out of his back side.

Makes you wonder if you are one of them?

Mods, Mods, Mods!



I've put up with some things on here without reporting it - But this is below the belt!!!!
Calling someone a Latics fan!!! Disgusting!

I just appreciate that had he not purchased the club and moved us to the DW that after the gang of four that you love so much had f*cked things up, Wigan RL may well not be Wigan RL at all.

He made some mistakes why he was here thinking he could splash the cash and win trophies, but Uncle Mo didn't help there.

So he moved a few games to protect his primary interest....who wouldn't?

I think only two games were "moved" Wigan v Bradford played at Widnes and Wigan V HKR played at Leigh. The HKR one was due to the already agreed start of the pitch renewal.

The other time was v Widnes but that wasn't moved as such, just the fixtures reversed.

So that's two games, three if you count Widnes in twenty years!

No major problem IMO.

Exactly

It's not a major problem logistically, nor has it had that big of an impact.

The issue is from a reputation and perception POV. The moving of games and the relaying of the pitch during the rugby season is has had a negative impact on the club. It's been used by Latics fans to show that under the dual use of the stadium Latics come first. It's also been used a stick by rival fans to ridicule us as 'tenants' in a football ground.

Let's face it, one of the main reasons Latics fans don't want IL to own the ground is because it will reverse the advice. There are plenty of them who are absolutely gleeful that the famous Wigan Rugby are tenants in their ground. It supports the narrative of the town turning blue, or Wigan not being a rugby town anymore.

Or maybe it's because you don't relay a pitch in December?

How do other RL clubs relay pitches then?

Anyway regardless of the reason, has it been used a means to laugh at us?

Most would relay it in September/Ocrober and leave it for 4 months and didn't build a ground on a bog.

I don't care of other fans laugh at us. If they use the "rent boys" line it's usually because we're winning.

Exactly, didn't Hull and/or Huddersfield move a couple of games when they were having their pitches relaid?

The rental costs for the DW in the last published accounts were £241K. How much would it cost to build a new ground?

In that same period Saints with their own ground lost over £300K and that was in a season where they were champions, league leaders, got to Wembley and has three home games v Wigan.

Whilst a ground may look good on the balance sheet is it really worth that figure. Ask the Latics, Bury and Bolton fans.

Is that a joke?

How about you name some more clubs that have struggled because they own a ground Vs literally 1000's of clubs who do and don't struggle.

Very selective!

The point I was making was that many clubs who own their own grounds struggle far more than we do at Wigan.

But yet many who own a stadium do better. It works both ways.

By all means we can discuss if the option would be right for Wigan, but I can't see how you can point to a handful of struggling clubs and ignore the ones that do it right?

Saints own their own stadium and probably are the most successful side in Super league history yet they are struggling