Wigan Athletic have gone into administration, becoming the first English professional club to do so since the coronavirus pandemic began. The English Football League has said Wigan will be deducted 12 points. The sanction will be applied at the end of this season if the Latics, 14th in the Championship, finish outside the bottom three after 46 games. Should Wigan finish in the relegation zone, the penalty will be applied during the 2020-21 season instead. Wigan have won all three of their league games since the resumption of the Championship season on 20 June and are eight points clear of the drop zone with six matches left to play.
I like the idea of Birmingham City players paying the club £800 a week to be allowed to play for them.
There was a 2nd change of owner just a few months after the first, Dave Whelan may be getting involved again now this has happened...
This puts a whole new complexion on the matter, if true the EFL have been negligently complicit in a sting that has bankrupted one of it's member clubs...
Terrible if true, the EFLs Fit to own testing procedure has as many holes as our defence and should be held to account over this
Interesting article on the BBC website about Wigan's plight 75 people redundant already and the rest including the players and manager have only received 20% of their pay The EFL really needs to get a grip here. Even if fraud isn't eventually proven this must surely lead to a radical change in the fit and proper ownership test
No reason why this would be the tipping point if Bury or any of the other catastrophes they oversaw weren’t.
to be honest, this just stinks. Why would you spend £40 million on a football club (having been confirmed that you have the necessary funds) to then go and put the club in administration. I feel sorry for those that have lost jobs, and hope that this in thoroughly investigated
I think this could be a turning point This wasn't a business that simply ran out of cash after an owner had made extensive attempts to find the funds to keep it going No buyer spending that much money would've done so without a detailed due diligence exercise and ensuring that they had sufficient future cash flows....unless the buyer had a wholly different plan The buyer was therefore incredibly stupid / incompetent / naive, or knew exactly what he was doing. Any deal like this would have a force majeure clause in it so that if the business had deteriorated materially (in this case COVID-19), the buyer would be able to pull out I wouldn't be surprised - depending on what the administrators find - for this collapse to be referred on to the Serious Fraud Office, and that would be hugely embarrassing for the EFL and run (another) coach and horses through what is effectively a self certification fit and proper test I don't know whether this has ramifications for Wigan Warriors too given the shared stadium Something about all of this just isn't right
It's not and never has been a 'Fit & Proper Persons' test, the EFL themselves are neither 'Fit' nor 'Proper' in their administration of the Leagues, you really wonder what the f*ck they actually do for football in this country...
Looks as though there is a rescue scheme up and running, 2 sets of new buyers who include the Royals (Joe and some one else called Royal; a relative) and possibly Dave Whelan. The Warriors are also involved in the scheme too. They may get out of this, but how far will they fall? But it does look as though it was a method of taking money out of the club, for possible illegal or semi-legal purposes. I wonder if the EFL will hold their handsup and admit to not carrying out the right tests on "good and proper" owners. Whatever you say about our owners, they are saints compared to what some other clubs have
