Who wants him back?

Whelan hasnt got the cash to sustain a premiership club, he knows it, its time the fans accepted it.

Will he have the cash to sustain a Championship club?

orrell lad seems keen

A there or thereabouts list of the Prem's owners and their worth:

Arsenal Stan Kroenke & Alisher Usmanov $12b
Aston Villa Randy Lerner $1.5b
Blackburn Jack Walker Trust £800m
Bolton Edwin Davies £100m
Chelsea Roman Abramovich $8.5b
Everton Bill Kenwright & Robert Earl & Jon Woods £365m
Fulham Mohamed Al Fayed £550m
Hull Isis Nominees Unknown
Liverpool Tom Hicks & George Gillett $1.5b
Man City Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan $750b
Man Utd Malcolm Glazer & Family $2b
Middlesborough Steve Gibson £112m
Newcastle Mike Ashley £700m
Portsmouth Alexandre Gaydamak £100m
Stoke Peter Coates £175m
Sunderland Ellis Short £7.5b
Tottenham Daniel Levy & Joe Lewis $13b
West Brom Jeremy Peace Unknown
West Ham Bjorgulfur Gudmundsson $1.2b
Wigan Dave Whelan £150m

As you can see the list is split between Billionaires & Multi Millionaires.
I'd say that the Prem is now a Billionaires Plaything, the wages & debts involved are far too high for your average Multi Millionaire.

I'd expect the ones in Bold to either sell out shortly or take on additional investment.

Well Boro aren't in the Premier League any more and Portsmouth have changed owner.
Bolton seem to be in the same boat as Latics in having tighter than a crab's ar$e chairmen.

Latics suffering the same fate as Gretna is a definite possibility. They too were pushed well beyond the level they could sustain by an ambitious sugar daddy. Then once he pulled out they went into meltdown and folded within that season as they could not exist at the level they had been raised to.

This could have serious ramifications for Wigan RLFC (if it happens) as the recievers would simply sell the ground as it would be one of Latics' assets leaving us with only the ground at Orrell that is below required standards and can't be developed.

Whelan giving the stadium to Latics could turn out to be a disaster for both clubs in a few years' time.

Who would they sell it to? It's not as though they can move it!

I suppose they could knock it down and sell it to a building firm, though the council would need to agree, and that would never happen.

Interesting possibilities, though more likely I just think Latics will slump back through the leagues until they reach their natural level again.

They could knock it down??????

More than likely it will stay there and both clubs will play out of it.

The council do own a small percentage of the ground!!!!!

And WE are sitting tennants.

They couldn't stop a sale (as far as I'm aware), but they could stop the land being used for rebuilding.

But I guess it depends what the new owners are planning to build before you start talking about 'bringing jobs and investment to the town'.

A factory? A supermarket? A casino? A cinema complex?

There are obvious reasons why none of those would apply.

Maybe we could have another zoo? - after the roaring success of the last one.

I suppose we could always use more office space - to add the masses of vacant office space the town already has.

Even building a new housing estate is difficult to conceive if the trade-off is the loss of Wigan RL, one of the town's sporting jewels. They'll just have lost one in Latics; will they want to lose a second merely to create yet another Brookside-type cul-de-sac.

Sorry, but at present this sounds like pie in the sky to me. Given that the stadium would have sitting tenants (on a lease for 50 years), I'm guessing that some kind of satisfactory arrangement would have to be reached with them first. You can't just bulldoze a house if a tenant still has occupancy rights. Presumably something similar applies to businesses. Which would make it even less appealing to a potential buyer.

There may be a germ of truth in what you say, but I doubt it's anything like as simple as you suggest.

Davies is the money man, but doesn't actually have a lot to do with the running of the club, leaving it to Phil Gartside to deal with. That said, the club are still in massive debt from building the Reebok, so it is with good reason to be prudent.

Latics aren't in the best of shape you know, despite making cutbacks.
Look how much they raked in this summer yet they had hardly anything to spend.

Very interesting from The Guardian

[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/jun/03/english-premier-league-debt[/url

[i'Wigan Athletic are where they are, in the JJB Stadium and in the Premier League, solely due to the patronage of local market trader made good, Dave Whelan. Interest free loans from his holding company were increased to £35.6m, and Wigan were given another unsecured loan of £7.5m assumed to have come from Whelan. Barclays Bank maintained their funding at £23m because of Whelan's backing. The accounts make it clear that Wigan, who expect to continue to make losses, would not be solvent without Whelan's financial backing.'[/i

what kind of tenancy have we?
if its a secure tenancy, they cant evict us.........if its unsecured and on a rolling contract, then they can.

BUT......if the council own a small percentage then they would have to agree to sell their share..........and can anyone imagine a labour council selling out to line the pockets of a capitalist???????????????
neither can i.

stop worrying about it, and let whelan worry about it when it happens.

a labour council dont make me laugh
they may be a labour council by name but there as bent and corrupt as any capatilist on the planet

They still won't want to lose Wigan RL, especially if they've just lost Latics.

The notion that even a council like Wigan's would happily wave goodbye to both the town's pro sports clubs in return for a new housing estate is totally laughable.

Do they council still own a fraction though? Thought I'd read somewhere on here that they just had a 15% stake in Whelco Holdings (the former owners of the stadium)?

This thread has just got silly. 'Receivers' knocking down the stadium and building a housing estate

In the event of latics going into administration and the ground being sold, it's highly unlikely that a potential buyer would buy a nearly new stadium to knock it down.

More likely is that you'd have to negotiate a new rental agreement and at worst your rents may increase.

IL could put a very low bid in and the receivers accept...win win.

Then get maybe Everton or Liverpool reserves to play there and coin in from there.

If Saints' ground isn't ready in time for the next licence period maybe we could sub-let to save them being chucked out of Super League.

I have dug out the old letter from the council

Does the land on which the Stadium is built still belong to the council?

Yes-The council granted a 99 year lease to Wigan Football Company Ltd (trading as the JJB Stadium) for the use of the land at Robin Park comprising the JJB Stadium and surrounds from 4th August 1999. The lease remains in place and specifies that the Stadium be made available for all the home fixtures of Wigan Athletic Football Club Ltd and Wigan Football Club Ltd (Wigan Warriors).

Who owns the Stadium?

85% of the shares of Wigan Football Company Ltd are owned by Whelco Holdings Ltd (a company controlled by Dave Whelan and his family) and 15% by the Council.