HMRC lodge winding up petition against Wigan

[Donegal Hibby]

Wigan seem to be jumping from one disaster to another between unpaid players and now this . Maloney must be really regretting going there now .
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/65881568

[ScottB]

Apparently a local billionaire might be buying them, so…

[Hibbyradge]

The Wigan.

[Donegal Hibby]

Might be a good time to put a bid in for Kerr?

[Not In The Know]

Can't be arsed with all these shan English clubs who have been living off the never never for decades.

[tamig]

I wonder what Dave Whelan makes of it all?

[Viva_Palmeiras]

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Can't be arsed with all these shan English clubs who have been living off the never never for decades.

My logical conclusion is that this persists propped up by BT/TNT/Sky and the BBC with a game of Russian roulette ensues. As The lemmings all walk towards a financial cliff they hope others fall off before them.

So is endgame more money for less teams and US / Saudi vying for “brands”?

[NORTHERNHIBBY]

When HMRC went after Rangers I bet they didn't use the word Lodge.

[Trinity Hibee]

Kerr may have better offers but you’d think we’ve been in touch. He might want to come back up the road after a couple of tough years

[NAE NOOKIE]

Wigan are a classic example of how difficult it is to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear in British football. I was rather surprised to see they hadn't even been a league club until 1978 when they were elected to the 4th division.

You can build all the 20,000 plus capacity stadiums you want for a club, but when it has spent almost it's entire existence in non league football in a town surrounded by giant clubs like Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool and Everton and a host of other medium sized ones like Bolton, Burnley and Blackburn the chance of building up enough support from a town where folk have traditionally followed these clubs, or even preferred Rugby League, has to be slim at best. Liverpool and Manchester are both less than an hour away by train.

In all honesty this is an EFL1 club at best that pretended it could compete with the big boys and started to get found out as soon as it's wealthy owner left the scene. They will always have the FA cup I suppose, but in truth if Dave Whelan had bothered to take into account the clubs history of rarely getting crowds above 4,000 prior to his arrival, not to mention it's geographical location, he would have been far better building it a 10,000 stadium and hoped it would grow organically rather than spending millions on a stadium far too big for it and bringing in a standard of players and managers that the club had little or no chance of sustaining once he was gone.

I hope they survive for the folk who have always followed them, but in the meantime if we can get a decent player on the back of their misery we should jump at the chance.

[Springbank]

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Wigan are a classic example of how difficult it is to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear in British football. I was rather surprised to see they hadn't even been a league club until 1978 when they were elected to the 4th division.

You can build all the 20,000 plus capacity stadiums you want for a club, but when it has spent almost it's entire existence in non league football in a town surrounded by giant clubs like Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool and Everton and a host of other medium sized ones like Bolton, Burnley and Blackburn the chance of building up enough support from a town where folk have traditionally followed these clubs, or even preferred Rugby League, has to be slim at best. Liverpool and Manchester are both less than an hour away by train.

In all honesty this is an EFL1 club at best that pretended it could compete with the big boys and started to get found out as soon as it's wealthy owner left the scene. They will always have the FA cup I suppose, but in truth if Dave Whelan had bothered to take into account the clubs history of rarely getting crowds above 4,000 prior to his arrival, not to mention it's geographical location, he would have been far better building it a 10,000 stadium and hoped it would grow organically rather than spending millions on a stadium far too big for it and bringing in a standard of players and managers that the club had little or no chance of sustaining once he was gone.

I hope they survive for the folk who have always followed them, but in the meantime if we can get a decent player on the back of their misery we should jump at the chance.

I'd say in the context of this conversation there is no such thing as "British".

You have a guy, Kerr, who had just won the Cup double in Scotland with St Johnstone, who had European football to look forward to.

You then have Wigan (Wigan!) with an almost equally small fanbase, paying stratospheric multiples of salary to the guy, so he moves to a low league.

It turns out, Wigan could never afford Kerr or anyone else.

But that's an English football phenomenon.

It's not relatable to Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales.

[Keith_M]

Not sure if I've got this mixed up but, wasn't the stadium that Wigan play in actually built for the Rugby league team?

[Ringothedog]

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Not sure if I've got this mixed up but, wasn't the stadium that Wigan play in actually built for the Rugby league team?

Not that I can see, it is owned by Wigan Athletic

[DH1875]

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Not that I can see, it is owned by Wigan Athletic

Wigan Warriors play there. Think the council own or owned a percentage of the stadium.

[Bristolhibby]

This all smacks of Gretna.

[Donegal Hibby]

They are in some mess . This article saying they owe around a £1million and the players are going to serve notice that they are leaving.
https://therealefl.co.uk/2023/06/12/...w-development/

[Billy Whizz]

Had a look at their accounts to June 2022

Turnover £8.3m
Staff costs £13m
Operating loss £10.3m
Profit on sales of players registrations £2.8m
Net loss before taxation £7.7
Ave League attendance 10,343

This bit is worth reading too

Financial risk management
The Company is exposed to financial risk through its ability to successfully manage its financial assets and I with the key financial indicator being cash flow: the ability to control a positive cash balance and generate p greater than obligations arising from liabilities as they fall due. The other components of the Company's finar are interest rate risk and currency risk.
The Company addresses cash flow risk by carefully managing its working capital inflows and outflows and via regular updating of its forecasts, that the necessary facilities are available to finance the working capital from funding from its ultimate parent company, EPIC.
The Company does not consider that the size of its interest rate exposure warrants the hedging of potential rate charges. The Company is exposed to occasional foreign currency exchange risks through its player tran: but does not hedge against this risk because of the infrequency/size of the transactions.
On behalf of the Board:
Mr T A Hammad - Chairman
28 February 2023

[NAE NOOKIE]

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I'd say in the context of this conversation there is no such thing as "British".

You have a guy, Kerr, who had just won the Cup double in Scotland with St Johnstone, who had European football to look forward to.

You then have Wigan (Wigan!) with an almost equally small fanbase, paying stratospheric multiples of salary to the guy, so he moves to a low league.

It turns out, Wigan could never afford Kerr or anyone else.

But that's an English football phenomenon.

It's not relatable to Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales.

Well, I would agree that you are correct in that context, but it isn't really what I was thinking about.

It was more around building infrastructure or spending money on players that in the long run can't be sustained by growth of a supporter base. In Scotland Gretna and Livingston are examples of that. Gretna because they funded players using the owners money but simply had no chance of growing support that could sustain a league club once he was gone and Livvi with a stadium far too big for their home crowds and no chance of competing for support with surrounding big city clubs established for far far longer. You could probably lump Clydebank FC in there as well from back in the day.

In that area Wigan could have had a better chance being the only professional club in a town of over 300,000 people, the fact they haven't managed sustained crowds of over 10K in a town that size says it all really.

[O'Rourke3]

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Well, I would agree that you are correct in that context, but it isn't really what I was thinking about.

It was more around building infrastructure or spending money on players that in the long run can't be sustained by growth of a supporter base. In Scotland Gretna and Livingston are examples of that. Gretna because they funded players using the owners money but simply had no chance of growing support that could sustain a league club once he was gone and Livvi with a stadium far too big for their home crowds and no chance of competing for support with surrounding big city clubs established for far far longer. You could probably lump Clydebank FC in there as well from back in the day.

In that area Wigan could have had a better chance being the only professional club in a town of over 300,000 people, the fact they haven't managed sustained crowds of over 10K in a town that size says it all really.

TBF Livingston was getting on fine but had to build a bigger stadium to qualify for the Top League. The stupid rule insisting on capacity hammered everyone outside the big cities and was unnecessary, unless it was to ensure the two cheeks got decent access for their support, while limiting access for away fans.

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[Donegal Hibby]

Wigan has been bought over .
https://www.footballscotland.co.uk/s...cured-27124280

[jacomo]

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Wigan has been bought over .
https://www.footballscotland.co.uk/s...cured-27124280

Lucky them - Shaun Maloney stays!