The 12th Man: Are Wigan Athletic fans in support of 'Project Restart'?

With Wigan Athletic returning to their Training Centre at Euxton on Monday, our panel of 12th Men give their thoughts on getting back to business...with Covid-19 still a huge problem worldwide.
Kieffer Moore and Cedric Kipre back at EuxtonKieffer Moore and Cedric Kipre back at Euxton
Kieffer Moore and Cedric Kipre back at Euxton

Martin Tarbuck:

Better to be a leader than a follower I suppose. Unfortunately, in this case, I suspect the Championship tail is being firmly wagged by the Premier League dog when it comes to football. I am sure we are all missing football, but is there really any need to start it up so soon? Why can’t we just put the season on pause, like much of life is, until the COVID-19 storm passes? Witness the farcical scenes in the Bundlesliga...players sat two metres apart on the subs bench, but the second they go on the pitch they are free to get as close to the opposition as they like to get the ball. Yet they can’t celebrate with their own players when they score! You just cannot and should not play competitive football under such bizarre circumstances. We are supposedly ‘over the peak’, but that might only actually mean that 51 per cent of the total number of people dying of this terrible disease have done so thus far. Indeed, it could be less than half depending on the shape of the curve. Is it a Simon Haworth dink over the ‘keeper at Wembley, or an Andy Liddell banana shot dipping slowly under the ‘keeper straight off a throw-in? Yes, let’s get it back on football. It is simply too early and too ridiculous to re-start football, and personally I would rather not play at all than play behind closed doors with restrictions in place. It comes down to one thing, and one thing only: money. The fact that billions of pounds are invested in the game means it needs to resume ASAP. Sadly, Wigan Athletic are now complicit with this, as are most other clubs. We have no choice not to be. If you don’t pay the going rate for players and seek out financiers, then you sink like a stone - and these are indeed very worrying times on many levels. Firstly, we are at the behest of our Far Eastern investors to keep paying the wages of players which, to be fair, they already were to a certain degree. But now they are getting no income rather than some. Secondly, player contracts are due to run out, and the likes of Leon Balogun will probably not play for us again, as well as several others on the release list. Whole teams will look different come July 1 potentially. And I’m sorry to bang on about this again, but watching football on a TV screen is no better than playing a computer game. I know we can get carried away watching internationals and cricket but sport is – and always has been – best enjoyed in the flesh when it is your team. A fan traditionally was and always should be an active participant in this beautiful game called football, not a passive observer via a box of valves and wires. If it is meant to be that we have to watch games at home on telly, then so be it. It simply won’t feel real to me, because football is about so much more than watching a few blokes kick a ball about for 90 minutes. I want that experience of watching the game and clicking through that turnstile, not watching it at home while my kids demand I put the Disney Channel on. I feel it is all down to pressure rather than a willingness to play football again that we face this situation, and I can’t say it sits right with me. But que sera sera and all that, and of course...UP THE VIRTUAL TICS!!

Statto:

My personal view is it too early to think about football, with hundreds of daily deaths. But with teams returning to social distance training, we have to. To me, if you can’t finish the season with the same squad that you had when the action stopped in March, with loan players and those out of contract, the season should be null and void. For a player coming to the end of his contract, say he has a three-year deal lined up at another club. He’s not going to risk that for an extra month’s football, where he could get a long-term injury. Like Troy Deeney said, you can’t get a haircut till at least July, but by mid-June you can stand in a penalty box fighting over an incoming corner. All seems too soon for me. Stay safe as ever.

Craig Wigan:

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So there’s a lot of talk about what we should do with the football season, and I just can’t comprehend why any option would lead to cancelling this season. Why would we affect this season and not just adjust future seasons? Of course, teams in better/worse positions have different opinions, but it simply needs to be finished, and I think it should be finished everywhere – when ready. Even if ending now means the Latics are safe, and returning means we go on a bad run and drop back into the relegation zone. It’s just the right thing to do. The season is paused, that should be it. It may lead to no gap before the next season, and even some clubs having players leave if their contract runs out in June and they won’t sign a new one. But you’d think specialist rules and contracts can be arranged. The conversation about lack of income has come into it a lot but, as I’ve said for a while, I’d welcome a change to viewing limitations. And if the club ends up getting more income from Saturday 3pm games being screened live, then so be it. So now, rather than seeing 11,000 fans on the terraces with zero able to watch (legally) on TV in the UK (and I can only imagine another thousand tops viewing from abroad on iFollow, would the club be better off with only 8,000 fans on the terraces, but another 10,000 viewing at home (Wigan fans or not)? If the average spend per head in the stadium is £20 a ticket plus £3 food etc, then £23 per person for 3,000 less fans means we’d see a £69,000 loss. But with a £10 charge to view online (and I’d be willing to pay more), that could lead to £100,000 extra income, leaving the club better off overall. Depending on viewing figures, you could adjust that price to be profitable. Could we even see Wigan with a 25,000-seater stadium and 60,000 season ticket holders...just with the majority of viewers at home? As a Wigan fan living down south, would I pay £20-plus to watch each game live on my big screen? Probably. The extra viewers can lead to a greater affinity with the club, too, and increase other merchandise sales. Maybe this is the future? Maybe, outside Wigan, some clubs won’t be selling out their big stadiums, but their overall fan base will grow? It’ll be cheaper to run smaller stadiums, and I can guarantee – even if you stream every game live – there will still be plenty of fans wanting to turn up to a stadium and watch when allowed. So I don’t think it will ‘kill the game’, as many believe. I actually think it’ll expand it. Similar to how Sky’s extensive coverage of the Premiership gave that league a boost in the 1990’s, this could also happen to the lower leagues now. This virus could change football forever. But I think we’ll appreciate it more than ever, and it’s just about the clubs – and, more importantly, the leagues, associations, UEFA and FIFA, – all adapting and finding new avenues and legislations to help it thrive. As a football fan, I’ll happily put my money into my club and others for the entertainment it brings. It’s just, at the moment, the position this virus has put everyone in – and how I find myself, normally living 350 miles from my club – I simply don’t have an avenue to even do that. When they probably need it the most.

Caddy from the 5:

The Tics are returning to training on Monday and, to be quite honest, it’s hardly setting the pulse rushing with me. Quite the opposite in fact. I know everyone wants to get back to normal as soon as possible, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near ready for football yet. There’s far more important things going on in the world and, having seen some of the German games, I couldn’t think of anything worse than watching/playing the game behind closed doors. Although all the really funny soccer accounts out there will no doubt mention the Tics been doing it for years...oh how hilarious and original! I honestly think all the divisions should just be voided this season in England, and also the Scottish Prem...who’s that desperate to win a tainted title? Oh hang on... I see Mark Palios from Tranmere is already looking into the legality of them being relegated from League One, when they think they’d have got out of it...there were plenty of points for them to win, and they were on a roll at the time. I don’t know what the answer is regarding promotion and relegation, but I can see lawsuits and lawyers getting rich for a long time to come. But as usual the greed of the FA and the Premier League to finish their showpiece leagues at any cost far outweighs the safety of the players and the general consensus of the country. Lets get people safely back to work in the real world first. Sport isn’t more important than life or death, as Bill Shankly said – not by a long way. Our time watching the Tics will come again, let’s just make sure we’re all there to see us, I say. Right, I’m off for a social distancing ‘Bow, stay safe lads and girls.

Sean Livesey:

When football and in particular Wigan Athletic is such a large part of your life it’s a horrible wretch to miss out on that. Over the last decade I’ve spent many weekends working, unable to attend every Latics fixture due to work and family commitments and it’s difficult to comprehend initially having to miss so much of a passion that in younger years that nothing would get in the way. So usually at this time of the year I would be bemoaning the fact that the football season had finished and longing for a return in August and once again wondering how I can juggle fatherhood, a job that requires me to work most weekends and how I get to Latics in the middle of it all. But these are not normal times, and a return for football at this time just doesn’t feel right. It can’t be right when many thousands are still losing their lives each week, it can’t be right that football league clubs many of whom are already living hand to mouth have to bring players off furlough to complete a season that in all senses ended at the start of March. As with the return to schools it feels short sighted to rush to return to something when the country is still so badly affected. The Premier League will clearly return but all that displays is the disparity in the haves and have-nots of the football clubs in this country the expensive testing regimes that are required by Public Health England to re-start will be paid for by the Premier League for those clubs at the top of the football pyramid but lower down those clubs who are most in need will have to fund it themselves, albeit via deductions from the payments clubs receive from the EFL. League Two voted early to end the season, joining leagues across Europe and Scotland in recognising that the best course of action was to end the season then. League One may well go the same way but the Championship is in a peculiar place with promotion to the Premier League meaning such vast financial rewards. I was interviewed on Radio Manchester on Friday regarding possible restarts in the football world and it was put to me that an early curtailment was of particular benefit to Wigan Athletic and that may be clouding my judgement – but even if we were at the other end of the table I would be keen for the season to end now. Football means so much to so many but it means very little in the current climate, especially when it’s return is being pushed by a government wanting to push a vision of some form of normality. But one element we’ve not mentioned at all through this is just how football returns without supporters? Again this shows the disparity between Premier League and Football League clubs. It is one thing for the Premier League to return without supporters, the vast majority of Premier League clubs income comes via the broadcast deals so it’s natural that the Premier League would want to return to fulfil those broadcast deals but it’s a completely different matter for the football league. For clubs like Latics and those further down the pyramid to play games in empty stadiums without their supporter base is unthinkable from both a financial and practical point of view. Those clubs rely on match day income be it supporters purchasing programmes and merchandise alongside tickets and I still haven’t seen a satisfactory explanation in to how clubs will be compensated for this loss of income. Why then should they fight to return to playing when they will be out of pocket? And this is without knowing whether it is really safe or not for players to return. There may be some income generated by the clubs if they manage to stream their matches to season ticket holders at home, but I have no great desire for football to return so I can watch Latics play in empty stadiums on my laptop. They say football is nothing without fans and they were right there – of course I understand if this continues it could be months if not years until we return to the DW so it’s a new norm we may have to get used to – but it still feels too soon. There are just too many variables at the minute and when a return date of August/September for the new season could offer some much needed time for clubs to work out how to get around many of the issues currently presented it feels foolish to try to play out nine games now. Let’s finish the season now however that is done via as it stands now or points per game and let’s look ahead to next season and how football can return then. I’m under no illusions that it will be a long time till I return to the DW Stadium and I can’t wait till the day we do all return but until then it feels wrong to even consider football returning.