Awww, what's up? Are Wigan Athletic supposedly taking up a decent teams 'place' in the Premier league and you don't like it? It's well known that we don't have as much support as other clubs but that doesn't mean we don't deserve our place in the Premier League!

you dont

Why not? As we have beaten your team on more than one occasion, I would suggest that your team doesn't deserve to be in the Premier League either then! I believe it's about the number of points you win over a season, not how many fans turn up to support the team?!

The more cretins moan about us not 'deserving' our place in the PL, the more most Wigan fans laugh and come to realise that the vociferous fans of all clubs are the biggest low lifes there are.

They claim to love the game for what it is, but in reality they just want franchise football, where the division a club is in, is based on fanbase and some bizzare reckoning of historical significance (that they make up seemingly on the spot), dispensing with tradition and league position based on winning and losing matches.

Why not go the whole hog and present ManUtd with the title at the start of every season, then give the cups to Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs, Villa, Leeds and a Sheffield club on a rotational basis?
Oh that's right, football is a meritocracy, lose to many matches and you get relegated, win enough and you get promoted and maybe even win something.

You've got to at them, because other wise we'd just go mental due to their idiocy.

u6981.....are you the only wigan supporter.....no wonder martinez is speaking to a very special club

Yes because not having many posters on an internet forum means we are a joke of a club

Wigan earned their place in the Premier League - yes they may have ridden their luck and survived thanks to the failure of others but they DID survive. Whether they can manage to do that for another season though when Rodallega, McCarthy and N'Zogbia are sold on remains to be seen. I'd rather see a team like Wigan who may not have many fans but do try to play football than some 'big club' who just believe they have a divine right to be in the big time (Leeds Utd).

Wigan were bought their place in the PL by DWs millions and if TV money didn't exist even he couldn't afford his own private club taking the place of a fans based club.

Taking 274 fans to an away PL game is a disgrace.

if i had to define the term 'sour grapes' to someone i would show them this article.

and all coming from a leeds fan, a city that has more man utd fans in it than leeds fans

you couldnt make it up

Comment deleted by Article Creator

SOUR GRAPES!! I've been a football fan for over 50 years. I understand and value the roots of the game. It always was, the peoples game. Manyoo, Liverpool, Villa, Everton, Sunderland, Newcastle and others are big clubs because, over the decades, their fans have supported them in great numbers and they still do. Wigan, Fulham, Bolton, Blackburn, Blackpool, Burnley, Hull, Watford, Reading, and other clubs with current or recent PL experience are small clubs because their people chose not to support their local clubs.

In Fulhams case they chose to watch Chelsea, In Wigans case they chose to watch the Rugby team but in both instances Squillionaires, for their own selfish egotistical reasons, have chosen to interfere and with the course of evolution and put 3rd div clubs in the PL at the expence of tens of thousands of ordinary people denying their clubs the same opportunity.

The advent of the PL happened when rich business hi-jacked the game. They then sold it to SKY, who in turn extort prodigious amounts of money from the people of this country to give it to these owners who in turn have made players and their agents obscenely rich. Since then PL owners have voted themselves para payments which mean they will stay in the PL forever and other clubs with massive popular support will be denied the opportunity of playing in the PL.

DW has just claimed that 20 years ago Wigan only had 1500 fans and now they have 20k. That is of course a lie because half their gate are supporting the visiting team and half their support would dissappear back from whence it came if they were to lose their PL spot. Compare that with Derby County, Leeds United, Notts Forest, The Sheffield clubs and others who attract crowd of over 30k when not in the PL but will probably never again have the chance of playing at the top level again.

Bitter! Why should I be bitter?

bitter?? probably because your an old man who's team are stinking of dung in the lower leagues of english football. leeds had there day, thats gone for good my friend.

(U2009) it seems that EVERYTHING you say is flawed, some of it is just BS, your knowledge barely exists, but overall your entire attitude reeks of sour grapes.

The list of teams you name as being 'small clubs' are all small towns and cities as opposed to to the giant cities of Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle etc. you compare them to, is it any wonder they don't attract the same following?

You lump Dave Whelan in with Al Fayed, one a man who's thrown money at a 'small club' he has no allegiance to, just for publicity, the other, the ONLY ex-football to own ANY club of note and the one from his home town too, yes he's chucked many a million at Latics, but it's far less than many 'big clubs' who still haven't got back to the PL have done over the last decade and he knows there's nothing to be made from doing so either, he does it for the love of his town and the passion he has for the game itself.

You lay much of the blame on SKY and most would agree that the billions SKY has pumped into the English game has altered the entire structure of English football, has it really made it worse?
Some will say yes, football is now business first, sport second, but this had been the case for decades already all SKY did help things happen faster, which isn't a bad thing either, before SKY came along with their giant chequebook, football was in the doldrums, even most of the massive clubs you name struggled to fill their grounds on a regular basis, the whole infrastructure of football was crumbling and the game as a whole was like something from the '30s.

Those same clubs you mentioned welcomed the windfall with open arms, Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham, Derby etc. were all very happy to take their cut and spend, spend, spend, 'smaller' clubs saw their chance and some decided they wanted a piece of the pie, this is only fair afterall, why should a select few get everything?

We've seen more 'small' clubs take their place in the PL than expected, each one has brought something different to the game, some have used their slice of the pie wisely, rebuilding grounds and growing back into what clubs should be, an integral part of their communities, sadly few have done this,most followed other clubs policies of spending beyond their means and caving in under giant debt, which is the better choice?

Whatever your real views on football are, the best thing about the sport is the simply fact that it's run as a meritocracy, the good teams prosper and get promoted to the top, the poor ones fail and get relegated, as soon as this changes, giving importance to 'historical significance' (however that's tallied) and fanbase, the SPORT dies, becoming nothing more than a franchise system and while we may be on the way there already, any right thinking person should dispair that it ever goes that far.

What about the fans??

They built their clubs over many decades, Neither Wigan or Fulham were built by their fans, neither are self sufficient in the PL, the only ambition both have is to avoid relegation. They will effect this not on the pitch bit in smoke filled rooms where the owners will continue to carve-up the game and it's finances.

Both clubs were party to the increased para payments which means, in the event they are relegated, their income will supercede far better supported clubs thus giving them an unfair advantage and almost guaranteeing the effective end of relegation and promo from the PL. To emphasise this DW has admitted his and eight other clubs cannot compete with the clubs that will win the PL so he's been having talks with the other seven to introduce a salary cap which will further strengthen their companies and will see tens of thousands of English people have been disenfranchised and whatever they do their teams cannot gain promo to the PL.

The saddest result of all this is the PL will be further weakened and the PL championship will only ever be won by the current top six.

Now that I know original koppite is here to do the same as he did on 606, I'll never return, one mong (U2009) per site is more than enough.

That's right ignore the truth and bury your head in the sand, the truth hurts!.

Dave Whelan FC are an embarrassment to the Premiership.

myhammers - I have tried to resist writing this but I can't. At least we are still in the Premiership!

Unsurprisingly, it's taken over 2 weeks for a single Wigan fan to be bothered enough to respond.

Probably because we are too busy looking at the fixtures next season in the Premier League!

I'll save you any further wasting of your time: Wigan Warriors v Hull KR is not on that list.

What a duff exchange! One of the biggest RL clubs in the world homeless so that the most plastic football club can have a ground it can call it's own courtessy of the caniving DW.