Stadium is looking shabby | Page 15 | Vital Football

Stadium is looking shabby

Has anyone seen the Evening Post front page expose of Pollards (not so secret) Q&A session around their previous stadium "plan" ?
Me neither
Any criticism from the council or Ms Nandy about this turn of events ?
Shameful and worthy of a red card from our ground immediately IMO
If the boot was on the other foot and Latics had tried that move on the rugby it would be massively headlined.
Sporting club even handedness my arse
 
Hampton said:
Has anyone seen the Evening Post front page expose of Pollards (not so secret) Q&A session around their previous stadium "plan" ?
Me neither
Any criticism from the council or Ms Nandy about this turn of events ?
Shameful and worthy of a red card from our ground immediately IMO
If the boot was on the other foot and Latics had tried that move on the rugby it would be massively headlined.
Sporting club even handedness my arse
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Not seen much of this, what went on?
 
ZAKKY said:
Not seen much of this, what went on?
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He's said that the plan for Sporting Wigan fizzled out because none of his investors or his family wanted to own a football club
So he said that he then made 3 separate bids for the stadium & the training ground with the intent of allowing whoever bought Latics to use Christopher park free of charge & us becoming tenants at the DW
Said they bid more that what the stadium eventually went for as part of the buy out & that they'd come close but the administrators were "a pain to deal with"

I'll put my tin hat on, but personally I don't have an issue with what he's said or did. He tried the Sporting Wigan thing & couldn't get it to work. His priority then becomes the business/club that he does own so rather than risk seeing them homeless he tried to buy the stadium
Taking him at his word, buying the training ground would have put the price of purchasing the club down to next to nothing which should have attracted more investors to Latics who at the time seemed to be being put off by the costs of having 2 training grounds & a stadium losing so much a year
Lets also not forget that the American/French group championed by plenty of Latics fans at the time were rumoured to not actually want to buy the stadium & incur its £1mill a year losses

Radlinski has also confirmed that Phoenix have told them that they are increasing the rent & "they're working through that" with negotiations being held in the "right spirit" but tellingly that they've "spoken to the council to get them involved and make them aware of the situation"

They also admitted that when Talal claims it's a football stadium that the reality is that it is & when the owner makes "bold" claims about turning the stadium blue that they can't do anything about it "unfortunately"
 
Mighty Bongsmon said:
He's said that the plan for Sporting Wigan fizzled out because none of his investors or his family wanted to own a football club
So he said that he then made 3 separate bids for the stadium & the training ground with the intent of allowing whoever bought Latics to use Christopher park free of charge & us becoming tenants at the DW
Said they bid more that what the stadium eventually went for as part of the buy out & that they'd come close but the administrators were "a pain to deal with"

I'll put my tin hat on, but personally I don't have an issue with what he's said or did. He tried the Sporting Wigan thing & couldn't get it to work. His priority then becomes the business/club that he does own so rather than risk seeing them homeless he tried to buy the stadium
Taking him at his word, buying the training ground would have put the price of purchasing the club down to next to nothing which should have attracted more investors to Latics who at the time seemed to be being put off by the costs of having 2 training grounds & a stadium losing so much a year
Lets also not forget that the American/French group championed by plenty of Latics fans at the time were rumoured to not actually want to buy the stadium & incur its £1mill a year losses

Radlinski has also confirmed that Phoenix have told them that they are increasing the rent & "they're working through that" with negotiations being held in the "right spirit" but tellingly that they've "spoken to the council to get them involved and make them aware of the situation"

They also admitted that when Talal claims it's a football stadium that the reality is that it is & when the owner makes "bold" claims about turning the stadium blue that they can't do anything about it "unfortunately"
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TBH it looks like the Admins did us a favour on this one by refusing the bids from Lenegan.
 
The Q and A is on their website (felt a bit dirty logging onto that tbh). It’s in two parts and worth a read. It’s sectionable so easy to skip the irrelevant shite.

MB has summarised it. I maybe mistaken but wasnt Pollard stating he wanted to buy the club at the start of admin (or merge it with the eggs). Claims in that article he never wanted to. The reality is three bids were made for our ground. They must surely have known it would massively decrease the clubs value and make any sale more difficult. Unforgivable in my opinion. I suspect Krasner & Stanley knew that and is why they wouldn’t deal - they didn’t want to be responsible for liquidating a football club.

Confirms the rent is going up. Why they are letting the council know to get them involved is beyond me. They should have no part on any negotiation. Clearly as per usual they are expecting them to bail them out and act on their behalf. At least they recognise it’s a football stadium and our owners can do what they like with it.

Confirms they won’t be building a new ground - or adding new stands to their gifted training ground. They were also miffed about the ticket office staff prioritising our season ticket sales. As and aside he talked about their finances and the egg chasing league in general. Basically there isn’t much money in it and concedes their attendances have fallen steadily.
 
Made in Wigan said:
I maybe mistaken but wasnt Pollard stating he wanted to buy the club at the start of admin (or merge it with the eggs). Claims in that article he never wanted to.
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He says that he wanted to & did everything in his power to make it happen but no-one at the Warriors wanted to get involved with that, his family didn't want to get involved in that & nor did the 2 investors he brought in to their club last year
 
Made in Wigan said:
The reality is three bids were made for our ground. They must surely have known it would massively decrease the clubs value and make any sale more difficult. Unforgivable in my opinion. I suspect Krasner & Stanley knew that and is why they wouldn’t deal - they didn’t want to be responsible for liquidating a football club.

Confirms the rent is going up. Why they are letting the council know to get them involved is beyond me. They should have no part on any negotiation. Clearly as per usual they are expecting them to bail them out and act on their behalf. At least they recognise it’s a football stadium and our owners can do what they like with it.

Confirms they won’t be building a new ground - or adding new stands to their gifted training ground. They were also miffed about the ticket office staff prioritising our season ticket sales. As and aside he talked about their finances and the egg chasing league in general. Basically there isn’t much money in it and concedes their attendances have fallen steadily.
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I don't think someone buying the stadium massively devalued Latics & made a sale more difficult - as I mentioned the American/French group didn't want the stadium as its a bit of a white elephant, needs/needed money spending on it, its too big & it loses £1mill a year.
Get that millstone from round Latics neck & have us paying rent instead with the owners able to put money straight in to the club rather than the stadium & it was more attractive to some - after all that arrangement hasn't harmed investment in Wigan RL
There was no real value in Latics as a separate entity anyway & hence why the administrators said that if you bought the stadium and/or the training ground you could buy us for a quid

I thought exactly the same as you though regarding the Warriors contacting the council to let them know what was happening. The council said a while back when the Bahraini bid was going through that the issue of rent between the stadium owners & the tenants was nothing to do with them & not the reason for any delay with authorising a lease to any new owners
In all honesty I don't really think that the Warriors themselves have any say in what the rent is so the use of the word negotiating isn't really correct IMO. If you rent a house out to a tenant, you're losing money & say to the tenant that you're going to increase the rent by £50 a week if they turned round & asked to negotiate a figure more acceptable to them, then you'd tell them where to go. That's a simplistic view I know but I think Radlinski was overplaying their say in the matter to reassure/placate their fans
 
Made in Wigan said:
Confirms the rent is going up. Why they are letting the council know to get them involved is beyond me. They should have no part on any negotiation. Clearly as per usual they are expecting them to bail them out and act on their behalf. At least they recognise it’s a football stadium and our owners can do what they like with it.
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Just reading through the thread and Pollards antics and was thinking more or less the above myself, Talal should tell the Council to fuck off if they stick their noses in!
 
So, they are going to carry on playing in our mainly blue football ground and pay an increased rent.
The two top people at their club have clearly stated it is a football ground that they rent from the Football Club, and any changes to the ground the Football Club wish to do, is no business of theirs.
Lets hope that finally after 20 odd years their thick inbred fans realise this, and start to be a little more thankful for what DW did for them, and a bit more respectful to our club and our new owners for allowing them to continue to use our ground, because, as Pollard stated, he hasn't got the money to build a ground for the homeless chubby cuckoos.
Hopefully they won't agree on the rent and they will finally go to where they had originally planned on going before DW bailed the fat inbred lodgers out.
Horwich Worriers has a certain ring to it if you ask me.
 
TRUE BELIEVER said:
TBH it looks like the Admins did us a favour on this one by refusing the bids from Lenegan.
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As much as i hated the Admins i took one almighty sigh of relief when they showed that sniped nosed bastard Pollard the red card, i vowed (with a heavy heart) never to step foot in that stadium again if he owned it, away games only for me.

So just this once......Well done Admins! :clap:
 
Mighty Bongsmon said:
He's said that the plan for Sporting Wigan fizzled out because none of his investors or his family wanted to own a football club
So he said that he then made 3 separate bids for the stadium & the training ground with the intent of allowing whoever bought Latics to use Christopher park free of charge & us becoming tenants at the DW
Said they bid more that what the stadium eventually went for as part of the buy out & that they'd come close but the administrators were "a pain to deal with"

I'll put my tin hat on, but personally I don't have an issue with what he's said or did. He tried the Sporting Wigan thing & couldn't get it to work. His priority then becomes the business/club that he does own so rather than risk seeing them homeless he tried to buy the stadium
Taking him at his word, buying the training ground would have put the price of purchasing the club down to next to nothing which should have attracted more investors to Latics who at the time seemed to be being put off by the costs of having 2 training grounds & a stadium losing so much a year
Lets also not forget that the American/French group championed by plenty of Latics fans at the time were rumoured to not actually want to buy the stadium & incur its £1mill a year losses

Radlinski has also confirmed that Phoenix have told them that they are increasing the rent & "they're working through that" with negotiations being held in the "right spirit" but tellingly that they've "spoken to the council to get them involved and make them aware of the situation"

They also admitted that when Talal claims it's a football stadium that the reality is that it is & when the owner makes "bold" claims about turning the stadium blue that they can't do anything about it "unfortunately"
Click to expand...
All of a sudden it becomes very clear why they threatened to move the club to Leigh. They had no intention whatsoever of paying the seven figure rent Pollard would have charged at Latics. Financially it would have been more worthwhile to move to Leigh for a 2-3 years whilst building a new stadium in Wigan
 
Mighty Bongsmon said:
He says that he wanted to & did everything in his power to make it happen but no-one at the Warriors wanted to get involved with that, his family didn't want to get involved in that & nor did the 2 investors he brought in to their club last year
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It’s a confusing statement. He states ‘we’ then says his club, family or shareholders didnt want to own a football club.
 
The fact that they've already gone squealing to the council speaks volumes. They know they've got no legal room to manoeuvre around it and the only thing they can do is try and put pressure on Latics through the council and try to negotiate as small an increase as possible.

This about the Latics owners having a pair of bollocks and holding their nerve here. We've got the rugby exactly where we want them and they can't do a thing about it. They've got nowhere that they can threaten to up sticks and move to, as both Robin Park and Leigh are not big enough to cater for their needs, whilst Bolton will ask for rent just as much as what we probably want, which is market value. They are well and truly trapped and Latics have no excuse to not stay firm and not respond to any pathetic attempts at negotiation from both the Rugby and the Council. Latics need to make it clear..."This is the rent we are asking for from the start of the next rugby season, no negotiation, either pay it or you know where the door is!"

Now I don't know what the market value for a year-long stadium rental is for the facilities that the DW has, but if Hull FC are paying £1m a year for the KCOM then that should be the price for Warriors to rent the DW. As for the stadium, we need to be removing all Wigan Warriors signage and caking the place in Blue and White. Now where's the 200k that the fans raised going to again?
 
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