At what point do we think something special is going to happen.

That's a massive advantage for those three teams, plus of course they are set to receive
quite lucrative amounts in the form of parachute payments. How on earth are some of the
Clubs similar to Wycombe, Luton and ourselves for that matter, expected to compete on what
is not a level playing field.?

Those three teams will all be fighting to get back there for next season, when to stand any chance
of staying there, they will be expected to find the thick end of £100 million, just to compete with the
teams in the lower echelons of the Premier League.

As for us, I'd take a single season in the top division in the hope that the money we would recieve
( if the board saw fit of course), would enable us to sign some players who have the capability of
playing at the highest level and the parachute money ( if we were relegated) could go a long way
to consolidating our position as the longest serving member of the second tier in English League
football.

 

You are right we deserved a bit of luck but we should a knowledge it was luck nor sone great master plan by the board that saved us. We stayed up in spite of the board not because of it.

 

Agree DT. Being in the bottom three and constantly having to keep looking over our shoulders
week in week out is not a pleasant feeling, in fact I would go as far as to say it's positively debilitating.

How good was yesterday.? Our boys deservedly ensured we could claim local bragging rights by
beating Sheffield Wednesday on their own " muck heap", for the first time in eleven years. I don't
know about anyone else, but for the remainder of the night, I was cosseted in a warm glow that
made me feel really great.

This morning, that feeling was refuelled by trawling through the various match reports and glancing
at the League table in an effort to confirm that I hadnt dreamt yesterday's joyous event.

It's was there in black and white, in thirteenth place Barnsley on twenty five points from a total of
seventeen games. Absolutely brilliant. Let's get behind them and hope that through everyone's
collective efforts for the remainder of this term, we can consolidate our position and hopefully kick
on and improve even more next season and beyond.

 

Sorry , I totally disagree , we got enough points with a total of 49 , which was enough to finish 4th bottom , they were gained over a season , every team had to deal with covid , it did not save us, we did it on the pitch .

 

We're a couple of players short of being a top 10 team I reckon. We're certainly short a striker, and maybe a centre half. I'd like to see a left wing back come in so Styles can play centrally. Otherwise, I think we're almost there.

There is the danger that we might sell one of our better performers, which we'll probably need to do if we're going to continue on the budget we have. So long as its only one, and the fee we receive is adequate, I don't see why that should be a problem. Mowatt is the obvious one, being out of contract in the summer, and probably one of the top earners at the club. Whilst I can't see us receiving 7 figures for him, I do think we've already got the players in the side to replace him.

Woodrow and Styles are the other two obvious ones. I can't see either leaving in this window as we'd command a decent fee for them.

Its all about getting the right players in, and the higher up we go, the more attractive we are to potential players coming in.

 

so it’s your view that we would have stayed ups with the points we had without the administration of Wigan. The administration happened after the normal football season had finished On 1/7/20. In any normal year this would have been irrelevant to us and we would have started the next season in L1. Performance on the pitch wasn’t good enough to keep us up in any sort of normal circumstances.

 

I believe Wigan cheated as did the Wendies & if they had played within the rules they would not have had the squad they had , Bolton did the same a few seasons ago & with out cheating their points tally would have been a lot less . Wigan even sold the club during the pandemic & went into admin with a view of getting the sympathy vote , thankfully it backfired on them & they got what their cheating deserved .

 

I don’t disagree with any of that. However literally the only thing that kept us in the division was Wigan’s administration. The only reason that administration which happened after the football season would normally end is Covid. I’m not making a moral argument like you I believe that Wigan had it coming just making a flat statement of facts.

 

Impossible to know really, the minute Covid happened it probably changed the dynamics at most if not all clubs and Wigan had the added issue of Admin changing theirs as well.
Would Wigan have played as well, if sat in mid table mediocrity? Would more teams took points off them?
Would this have changed the dynamics at the foot of the table? We will never know.
I would agree that prior to Covid we did not deserve to stay up &!the boards strategy didn’t appear to be paying off.