Wigan Athletic: The 12th Man have their say on the eve of Project Restart

Caddy from the 5:

Well it’s less than a week to go til we get back to playing in empty stadiums while people are still dying of Covid 19. And all in the name of money, plain and simple. The league finished in March, for me and many others, I expect. And ‘the run-in’ stinks of desperation from the Premier League and the EFL, the latter scraping Leagues One and Two but not their jewel in the crown... I wonder why? I do think Latics come out of this very well, though. The options they’re proposing seem fair to me. Personally, I’d have had taken the pass to watch the games on telly and let them keep the remains of my season ticket, BUT anyone who wants a refund is perfectly entitled to one and shouldn’t be vilified for taking it. Nobody knows other people’s circumstances, I’ve seen this happen on social media this week and it doesn’t sit well with me at all. At least Latics have listened to the fans and offered alternatives, unlike the chicken maulers at Blackburn, Sunderland and many others. At the end of March I’d have said we’d have had no chance of relegation, we were flying and eyeing up a play-off spot. Well, maybe. But now it’s a lottery again, nobody knows how anyone will perform in front of empty stadiums...*turns to camera and smiles*...I hear we need three wins to make sure we stay up, hopefully the last one will be the 6pm on a Wednesday v QPR game. Another great EFL decision...don’t they know Corrie’s back on? Obviously I hope we stay up, but I think the football side of this season will be forgotten among the legal battles that are undoubtedly going to happen. Let’s all just hope we’re good to go in August again. Right, I’m off for a ‘Bow and finding what channel we’re on on the dodgy box for next week. Stay Alert!

Statto:

Well this time on Monday, Paul will have a match report in the paper again! My view is it’s still too soon, but money talks. The three choices Latics have given season ticket holders are fair, and each individual has their own choice. I shall be watching the stream for the first game, and see how it goes from there. We are now entering a new season of nine games. It’s not a continuation, all form is out the window, no team is up to match fitness. They say never look at the league table til after 10 games at the start of the season. But this time it’ll be over by then, and we have to hit the ground running to achieve our goal of staying up. Stay Safe!

Mike Goodman:

Well, here we go again. Huddersfield away on Saturday looks like it’s finally going ahead. Being honest, I’ve not missed football over the past three months with everything going on in the world, and it hasn’t really sunk in that the Championship is restarting again very soon. Do I agree with football coming back? Not really. Will I be watching it? Definitely. It’ll be a welcome distraction from the constant bad news frenzy we’ve had for weeks. For me, following Leagues One and Two and using the points-per-game ratio to determine the outlook of the season was the best, and the safest, way forward. But a large majority of clubs in the Championship and Premier League voted to continue, so we now have to wait and see how this plays out. The clubs must have sought advice from a wide variety of sources (one would hope) about the risks and benefits of starting up again, but a massive plus is that you would surely imagine all clubs have extensive health and safety measures in place to protect all people involved in the restart. I just hope everything runs smoothly and, now the decision has been made to continue, it turns out to be a successful one. Rather than looking back in six months and thinking what a terrible decision it was to play games during a global pandemic. It’s going to be very strange watching the Huddersfield game at 3pm on a Saturday...on the television...with no fans. I imagine it’ll have the same feel as a pre-season/reserve game, and you wonder how that will impact the players who usually thrive off the energy of the fans. People always mock our attendances and, yes, they are small in number. But I’ll tell you what, we do make a difference when we turn up, and that’ll be evident in the matches played out on the telly. Will the games be played at the same intensity? We just have to wait and see. We were on a great run of form before the season came to a halt way back in March, but I would expect that momentum we built up during that successful period to now be lost, and it’ll be very interesting to see how we play next week, and how easy it will be to get it back. It’s an important stage of the season with some tricky games coming up, so it’d be great if we can hit the ground running with three points on Saturday, and everyone involved remains fit and healthy above all else.

Sean Livesey:

So, 14 weeks on from when we should have played Huddersfield, it’s coming back. Rightly or wrongly, Wigan Athletic will return to competitive football. I’ve been clear throughout this that I didn’t think football should return, it feels wrong to consider football in this context when there are still thousands losing their lives each week. But I also understand the difficulty clubs at all levels of the pyramid find themselves in. Football clubs are there to play football matches, and if clubs don’t play matches for as long as this pandemic may be with us, there won’t be many who will survive. It feels far too early but, once the Bundesliga returned, it was only a matter of time before the Premier League followed suit and, as a result, the Championship. I would have been more than happy for the season to finish as it was, and us look ahead to the 2020/21 season in whatever shape or form that takes. But instead we now restart a season that, for all intents and purposes, felt like it finished with the draw against Luton in March. As the phrase goes, we are where we are. It’s difficult to get excited about something you can’t actively be involved in. Football is a form of community culture – what many of us enjoy about it is wholly separate to the 90 minutes on the pitch. It’s the friendships often formed over many seasons, that transcend what actually goes on out there on the pitch. It’s meeting your friends every Saturday afternoon, going for a beer, and being united in a common passion for your side. I think Latics have made the best of a very bad situation, with the three options that were presented to season ticket holders over the last week: to take a pro-rata refund, to add that refund amount to your ticketing account for future purposes, or donate the amount to the club in favour of a streaming pass for the last nine games of the season. There’s a recognition at Latics of how difficult this situation has been for many who may have lost their jobs or indeed their income as part of the Covid-19 pandemic. There’s also an understanding of how different a streaming pass is when compared to actually going to the matches. The two are never comparable, and those who may not want to watch the season conclusion in this way have been catered for. So I think the response from Latics has been wholly generous, especially when compared to other clubs including Blackburn and Sunderland, who haven’t even offered refunds to season ticket holders. I exchanged my season ticket for a streaming pass, but there’s no right or wrong in this situation, and I can see why many wouldn’t want to watch the campaign completed in this way. It will be good to see football back in some form, but let us not think this is normal. We’re a long way from being normal again, and the only semblance of a return to normality will be when we’re all back at the Dave Whelan Stadium once again. Although it will be good to see football back, I can’t get excited over firing up my laptop at 2.50pm rather than clicking through the turnstiles. I can’t get excited about shouting at a screen rather than shouting at the referee from the Springfield Stand. It just isn’t football. We had a big group of us ready to travel over to Huddersfield back in March, taking in the ale-trail pre and post-match. I’m afraid sitting on the couch is no meaningful substitute. So what about the actual football...does it matter? No not really. In the grand scheme of things, football doesn’t matter. What will be the difference of staying in the Championship against heading down to League One, if we as Wiganers can’t go to watch our team every week? We’ve been to League One before, of course, and it doesn’t hold any fears for us. Indeed, for many it’s a preferable experience to the Championship. You win more than you lose, and some of the away days are fantastic. But still despite all of that, I want us to stay up for a myriad of reasons. The financial hits to clubs are going to be stark over the next few seasons. Once the furlough scheme winds down over the coming months, clubs will have very difficult decisions to make if supporters aren’t allowed back into the grounds. With all of that in mind, being in the Championship with the slightly improved financial conditions than in League One would be preferable for me. But also, if we think of just how well we were doing before the season was curtailed, it would feel awfully unfair if we ended up going down now. We have to hope the lads can pick up where they left off, and get the points needed to make sure we stay up. Whatever happens, football doesn’t really matter – but it may provide a distraction from the horrific and uncertain times in which we live.