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Championship side Wigan have gone into administration as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic starts to be felt in the English Football League.<\/p>\nChampionship side Wigan have gone into administration as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic starts to be felt in the English Football League.<\/p>\n
The club, who won the FA Cup in 2013, will be deducted 12 points as a result of the move, but this will not be applied until the end of the Championship season.<\/p>\n
If they are relegated, the sanction would be applied to the start of their League One campaign in 2020-21, but if their results on the pitch are good enough to stay up, it will be applied to the final 2019-20 table instead.<\/p>\n
A superb run of form has seen the Latics, managed by former Sligo Rovers boss Paul Cook, move out of the relegation zone and up to 14th in the Championship on 50 points with six games left to play. A 12-point drop would take them bottom and four points adrift of safety.<\/p>\n
The news was confirmed in a statement from the club\u2019s joint administrators on Wednesday lunchtime.<\/p>\n
One of the administrators from Begbies Traynor, Gerald Krasner, said: \u201cOur immediate objectives are to ensure the club completes all its fixtures this season and to urgently find interested parties to save Wigan and the jobs of the people who work for the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously the suspension of the Championship season due to Covid-19 has had a significant impact on the recent fortunes of the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cWigan Athletic has been a focal point and source of pride for the town since 1932 and anyone who is interested in buying this historic sporting institution should contact the joint administrators directly.\u201d<\/p>\n
The club were in the Premier League as recently as 2013, winning the FA Cup in the same year. They dropped down into League One in 2015 but made an immediate return to the Championship.<\/p>\n
The club recorded a net loss of \u00a39.2million in their most recent annual accounts for the year ending June 30, 2019. That was an increase of \u00a31.5m on the previous year.<\/p>\n
Wigan were owned by JJB Sports co-founder Dave Whelan until November 2018, when he and his family sold to the Hong Kong-based International Entertainment Corporation (IEC).<\/p>\n
There was a further change of ownership on May 29 of this year, when IEC divested its ownership to Next Leader Fund.<\/p>\n
IEC said in a letter to fans its decision came \u201cafter thorough assessment of several factors, including the club\u2019s financial position, management team and objectives, particularly the promotion to the Premier League\u201d.<\/p>\n
The letter added: \u201cThere are areas of misalignment in expectations which we feel may hinder our partnership going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cCombining with the outbreak of the Covid-19 has created more uncertainty around the financial position of the EFL and the football business as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
Damian Collins, the former chair of the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee, said he was sorry to see the news and added on Twitter: \u201cWe need a #gameplan for football to help clubs that have got into financial difficulties, made worse by the Covid-19 lockdown.\u201d<\/p>\n
Collins has suggested the Government should underwrite a scheme to help save clubs affected by the pandemic, but Oliver Dowden, the Secretary of State for DCMS, has said that \u201cfootball should first look after itself.”<\/p>\n