Article: Football - What Wigan Athletic’s future will hold?

The question, Wigan FC fans is how to push on in the next few years. For to long we have been just a selling club in effect the wholesalers of the premier league taking the risks to bring in the players to sell them on for next to nothing to bigger and "better" clubs. The key issues are the small amount of money in the club £190m is the chairman’s wealth but how much would he actually invest in the club. From what i see there is only three ways we as a club can go in the next season.

We can sell N’zogbia and bring in cash which is reinvested in the team we bring in some decent signings and we stay up comfortably, because the new teams struggle, other teams sell their best players or someone just has a nightmare season. The players will stay, we will get money and more importantly stay for our 7th season at this point we do the same again and follow Stokes example and become a "teapot team" (all ways in the middle of the table)

We can sell our players like N’zogbia but not invest in our team, we bring in some frees and some risks again some work and some fail. We by some miracle stay up but our stars leave the big three (or two by this time) are gone and we don’t make it to our 9th season. Or we just go straight down after our 7th season followed by a fire sale and we drop thorough the ranks and become a Middlesbrough.

We can hold on to the players we have but have no money to reinvest we stay up taking risks again until eventually three teams come up to strong for us and we are goners we drop simple as.

Its time for us to take charge come on Wigan sell the players who don’t want to be here and instead bring in some players I think we can make something of this club and stop with the "small club" rubbish we are touted with. But on a side note we are still doing better then Oldham

 

In all honesty, I'm quite proud of us being a small club, we all know we are, or at least we should do and there's no need to delude ourselves into thinking otherwise, as there are plenty of fans from Newcastle, Sunderland, Leeds, Nottingham, Derby etc. etc. etc. who fill the market for being so dumb.
Every time we get anything from a really big/rich club, like Arsenal, Liverpool or Chelsea, it's just another time we can stick two fingers up to the establishment, they hate us and we love it.

As for our future, we currently have as good a chairman as any other in the game, he won't throw money away and allow us to become another Portsmouth, we'll not get complacent and become a Middlesboro (I hope) and whatever he or Martinez tells the media, I'm fairly confident that neither are deluded enough to actually think we can compete anywhere near the top of the league.
I'm sure DW looks at Fulham as our dream to follow, but we all know that luck as much as money, or talent has taken them from being a "teapot team" (I like that phrase ) to a step above that, so where do we go from here?

Is it worth breaking our wage structure to keep our star players?
Should we let them leave to our rivals, even if we get fair prices for them?
These are probably the two most important questions we have to deal with and I certainly don't have a definitive answer for either of them, I just hope that DW and RM keep up the good work and above all stick to their principles, if they do I'll be happy wherever we finish this season.
In an ideal world though, we'd start the season with the squad of players we've currently got, with maybe just another LB/utility back as cover and another forward, I can't see that happening, but I certainly hope that whoever leaves, we get the best price we can for them and we bring in someone just as exciting to replace them.

 

No, no, no. We dont break our wage structure to keep anyone, that is my view on it.

We've seen the bad times in the past with buckets being passed around Springfield Park to try to pay players wages. I dont want to see that happen again.

We can and will progress using the current formula under Martinez. Thankfully Martinez actually gives a damn about the youth setup at the club and we have some good players ready to make the breakthrough in the next 12/18 months. That combined with our current transfer policy will hold us in good stead.

I am immensely proud that we are probably they only Premier League club who cuts their cloth accordingly, long may that continue. Because as clubs continue to spend money like it's going out of fashion, yet make no progress, it will inevitable end in a major club going to the wall. Thank god that wont be us.

 

the problem is if we dont invest we will go down end of we have to smaller team to stay up and when we go down i dont think we will be able to go back up with the quality of the champoionship we will need to invest like a stoke or a sunderland to stay up.

 

Then i'd rather go down then.

There is no guarantee that investment wouldn't still result in us going down. There are teams that have spent £100m - £150m over the last four or five years and made no progress at all.

If we were to do that but still go down then we'd be screwed.

 

Wigan should strive for more of the same , I put Wigan's last 6 or seven years , surviving in the Premier , as good an accomplishment as any other team .

 

i don't realy like the small club mentality and everytime steve bruce said it it made me cringe but as far as investment is concerned we have but we have stayed within the clubes spending power and not signed any old player like we have done in the past so thats one reason we have survied in the premier and the other is grit and determination that comes from the players at the end of the season but even if we do sell zogbia for the princely sum of 9 mill to villa(in my view cheap) then we couild get a decent player on board and maybe a loan player it worked with tom cleverley..

 

In the shadow of " Big Club Mentality " , " small club mentality " has little choice in the greedy environment in which they play . I have great respect for Wigans long membership in the " Premier League "

 

What does Wigan's future hold........ Definately a loss against the swans!!! haha

But fair do's N'Zogbia is Quality, i loved him at newcastle!