Mr Hussain laughing all the way to the Leeds. Let's hope Wakey join the Bulls in the Championship. That mess will never sort itself out. 3 million for an outside bog.
Getting back to Joel. He’s an ex St G Ill player, so I followed his career closely before he went to Manly. He will give you 100% week in week out. Strong defender, not a skilled off loader, but effective runner. Strong as an ox. Hard to sum a player up so quickly, but you’ve got a good one there. Would take him over Tamou any day
Rogues is the type of supporter shaped by the Lindsay era, the arrogance and posturing. The original Wigan fans are pretty good to be fair and could see the danger in a one team competition. The consequence is Pollard propping them up and like other posters have said its basically dead money. in my simple mind if you cant pay your mortgage and your Dad helps out its got a purpose and an end game return. If you cant pay your rent and Dad helps out its dead money to a buy to let entity.
Widnes were the Icarus of the 80's.
Didn't Leeds also hit financial problems after trying to spend big to compete? Our money woes hit later, which isn't surprising given the big deals we made back then - remember Sculthorpe and the Securicor van? Pity we p*ssed so much dosh up the wall on players who dismally failed to live to the mega-hype before getting transfers a lot more right under Hughes & McRae.
The club became a lot more aggressive in the transfer market once David Howes arrived. Goulding, Perlini, Gibbs, Newlove, Hammond, Busby didn't come cheap
I recall Ray French at the time of Newlove signing suggesting that Newlove was the type of world class player Wigan bought repeatedly from their rivals and Newlove coming to Saints might signify a club to really challenge Wigan
Sent from my PRA-LX1 using Tapatalk
The Newlove signing was definitely a sea change. As I recall Wigan were after him as well, and for a long time the reality had been that when that was the case, Wigan was where the player ended up. He was the killer ingredient needed to turn us into a winning team, but his signing also sent out the signal that we weren't going to settle with being also-rans any more. A real turning point.
The thing was, we'd always been there or thereabouts, finishing 2nd or 3rd in the League several times from the early 80's to mid-90's. It's good you mention Howes, because he brought a big leap in off-field professionalism and our recruitment became far more coherent and skilled. With Widnes and Leeds suffering financially after trying to match the piescum, once the SL came along (with its bigger TV revenues and full-time professionalism), the harder summer pitches that suited our style of play, and the piescum just beginning to diminish, we were in the right place at the right time to capitalise and become the best and most successful team in SL which, barring a few transitional lean seasons dotted here and there, and despite the emergence of the big bully-boys of Bratfud, we continued until our run of GF losses to those jammy Leeds tw*ts, followed by the stadium draining us of both focus and cash for a few years.