Wigan fans View on the Appeal

If I was Wigan fan l would be more concerned about finding a new owner than which league we were in.
Don’t think they owe HMRC anything. It’s usually HMRC petitioning for a winding up order that signals that a club is in financial difficulties and nothing reported in this regard about Wigan to be fair

 

They do owe HMRC. Over £2.5 million according to this.

ttps://www.thisismoney.co.uk/wires...tify-best-bidder-creditors-football-club.html

 

Yeah you’d hope so.

 

Exactly my point. They have been insolvent since they fell out of the Premier league. even with Parashoot payments there were making horrendous losses. Before they had Dave Wheelan underwriting losses by the way of debt transfer, which is ok as they didn’t default.


The sale to the HK fund in 2017, they clearly have underwritten their losses until they cut and run in June this year, selling the club to another entity, who placed them into administration immediately as the money clearly wasn’t there to pay its liabilities.


This is clearly a cut and run scenario buy the previous owners, they’ve created and inherited a mountain of debt they are unwilling to service and placed the club into Administration, leaving the administrators to sort out the mess, whilst they are sat in the Far East with no legal or financial responsibilities.


Sad for genuine supporters of Wigan, but this is a Bury situation, where previous owners have ran up a debt they cannot or will not service and sold the club along with all its financial issues for a Nominal amount to another party to distance them from any financial recourse.


Once a club or any business goes into the hands of administrators it’s effectively shafted. The administrators for all their PR exercises are only interested in their fees... not the long term welfare of the company they are administrating, generally it’s asset stripping to pay creditors and themselves.


Wigan in this instance, have no assets other than playing staff which are contracted on high salaries. Iv no doubts that HMRC will be knocking on their door soon, even if it’s just the PAYE on wages. Their annual tax bill onPAYE of £20m is circa £8m per annum / over 650k per month. I’d also love to know what further liabilities they have towards transfer fees for players purchased. We know they didn’t pay upfront for Kieffer, it was to be paid over instalments over the length of his contract, probably the same for Jamal Lowe and other players they will have bought. When are those payments due? Probably soon and probably the reason their preferred bidder scarpered when they started doing due diligence.


They will be in administration until the administrators have cut the wages and liabilities to a manageable level. At this stage without knowing the full facts, I would imagine it would take at least £20m to stabilise the club (money which in reality would never be recovered) plus another £10M to see them through next season. They are in dreamland if they believe this is going to be a quick fix, they will be under administration for months.

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/12098320/wigan-administration-sale-buyers-wage-bill/

 

Love is blind!
They totally overlook the fact that they have been 'buying' players or taking them on , not paying for them and scraping along paying massive salaries that they clearly couldn't afford.
Also they have a go at us for capitalising on their points deduction but are happy to do the same and benefit by saying Wednesday should have points deducted ( they should but that's another story)

 

It’s worse than Bolton. Bolton owned the stadium and property assets surrounding the ground. Wigan there’s nothing of value to fight over, their only assets are contracted players and if they don’t find the money to pay the players wages next month in full, Wigan are in breech of contract to those players, they can walkout on a free! For example Kieffer could walk and sign for another club if he’s not paid, whilst Wigan still owe the balance of the transfer fee to Barnsley.

 

Their fans can’t seem to understand the reason they are in financial difficulties is because they suddenly found themselves with owners who aren’t prepared to carry on risking their money, whether they were dodgy or not they pulled the plug because they weren’t prepared to bankroll it.

just look at their salaries to income, they’ve been running the risk of this for years, and needed new owners prepared to carry on racking up debts/financing them.

it galls even more to me in the fact this was the club that bought kieffer Moore off us, as we couldn’t afford not to take the transfer fee or pay the wages he was demanding, they claimed they could. Well they obviously couldn’t and that particular transfer and current outcome is a perfect example of clubs cheating by ignoring FFP. His goals would have been the ones to save them and to make matters worse they still owe us for him and will we get it?

 

Could easily end up with a big negative points start too. From Championship to L2(if lucky) is a real possibility.
Doubt it but hopefully a few clubs take it as a warning shot towards overspending.

 

On one hand I hope the players don’t get paid as it might make players and agents in the future look closer about the affordability of offers on the table. Unlikely but would be nice.

 

In reality I think the majority of the £1.8m offer made for Kieffer by Millwall or QPR will cover what’s owed to us should they manage to complete the deal. Under EFL rules all footballing liabilities are paid in full. However if Wigan did actually fold as a club with no transfer of league membership to another entity, Wigan will not exist anymore, hence we will end up with nothing. I don’t know if the EFL would compensate us in this instance or not as footballing liabilities are supposed to be guaranteed by the league. Hopefully we don’t need to find out.

 

We also only get paid after players and managers are settled up, so could also be dependent on how much?

 

I would think the transfer of a players contract is transacted similar to a property conveyance. I.e Barnsley have a legal charge over his Wigan contract for the funds owed to cover the transfer fee due. Similar to a mortgage charge on a property. If you sell a property that has a mortgage, the mortgage charge is cleared by the conveyance before the seller receives the balance of funds. Technically should Wigan sell him without the balance of the transfer due to us being paid, it’s fraudulent as they have sold a commodity that technically they do not have full ownership of. What happens should he be able to walk out of freedom of contract? I wouldn’t like to test that theory, however I would like to think before his registration could be released to sign for another club, that club would need to pay the charge we hold. But again that could potentially open a whole load of other legal complications.

 

The £500,000 they have to burn on a frivolous appeal should be used to pay some football creditors.

 

maybe the club can negotiate a lower settlement for moore providing they withdraw their appeal and risk wasting 500k
that way we breathe easier and get something back,
we could end up with zero and more importantly the wigan fans may still have a club to support.
football needs to pull together and not act like the sharks of the epl
their area as already lost bury, add bolton's problems & macclesfield don't look in good shape either, it will be pretty grim in certain parts of the nw

 

If Wigan were liquidated, I presume that their assets would still be sold off to pay the creditors as much as possible. Or maybe we could repossess Kieffer.....

 

It isn't the fault of anyone but Wigan that Wigan have famously overspent over a sustained period though.

 

The players can walk under freedom of contract if they are not paid their salaries in a certain time frame. Should Wigan be liquidated there will be nothing to liquidate as they have NO physical assets. The previous owners were clever in a business sense as they sold their failing business to a party that immediately placed that business into administration, that relinquishes all the previous owners responsibilities and left the administrators deal with the fallout created.

The way football is run has really surprised me when Iv recently started to look at physical contracts, which some in reality are written on the back of beer mats and hold little legal substance in a commercial environment. I don’t know of any club that’s gone down to this extent not paying transfer fees owed, as previously clubs used to pay on the nail when a transfer was agreed. I don’t think we could hold Kieffer responsible by holding his registration to ransom, it should somehow effects his rights to work in a legal sense. for example if he was injured which club would pay £1 to £1.5m to pay his registration debt to us. I would think the EFL would have to pay compensation as one of their member clubs at the time defaulted another and football debts are supposed to be guaranteed, but how far the guarantee goes I don’t know. hopefully we don’t need to test the theory.

 

The nearest comparison for what’s happened to Wigan is Portsmouth back in 2011. However they managed to recoup a lot of the transfer fees by managing to sell players but they had the benefit of income from Parashoot payments. Wigan don’t!