Quite an interesting video. Confirms the move to Robin Park at the start of 2019.

Also notes he's put in ~£800k this year alone. Nice stat for people who think he does things on the cheap.

Really stressed the need for the fans to turn up and support the club.

I am sure he has spent £800K this year but the question many will ask is, on what?

What fans see is the team on the pitch and not the cost and expense of the back room staff etc and when the club makes such signings as Sarge and see popular players like MM go and not be replaced I think a lot would say he's not getting value for money. I don't think I can recall a time where there was as much apathy in the fans over the squad and potential signings. Greenwood is a solid signing and Hardaker while an obvious talent splits opinion (that may change if he turns out to be a super-star again of course) but there are too many average and poor players running around in the first 17. If he wants bums on seats he needs to make sure the club signs players (and a coach) to put them there because like it or not, that's the sport of expectation Wigan fans have.

His £800K expenditure is to underpin the entire club. You can’t build a house on sand or it will just crumble. He’s getting the infrastructure right but as he says, it’s a business and not sustainable unless fans turn up. For fans to turn up in bigger numbers, the product on the field needs to improve so it’s a vicious circle.
I trust IL and believe the club is in the right hands. I’m confident he’ll appoint the right coach and bring in more quality players which we desperately need. (Eh hem.... scrum half please)!

I have always been and still am a big supporter of IL and his tenure as Chairman at the club, he brought back the good days.

But, he has taken his eye off the ball by allowing Wane so much control, which he is now wrestling back.

Wane should not have had his contract renewed at the end of last year, but was allowed to continue, his boring one man out rugby, big losses and loads of excuses for everything has made the fans not go to games and led to the dwindling crowds.

Wane was allowed the biggest salaried team in the league with 2 Marquee players and has delivered a very poor return, really bad business, IL should have stepped in earlier.

So IL is at fault for this, if he had got rid of Wane sooner it would have salvaged a lot more fans.

For training?

Stop going off on mad adventures overseas then,I understand the need for new capitol but lets be fair, and Lenegan himself admitted the Oz trip made nowhere near the amounts being touted, and seemed to have hacked off a fair few of the traditional fan base to boot, that coupled with a dearth of "star" names, some bog awful rugby over the last couple of seasons or more has led to a clear downturn of fans at the DW,keep taking people for granted and they will abandon you.

He won't break the vicious circle by not investing in the squad and coach. Speculate to accumulate and if he doesn't (or can't afford to on his own but won't seek other investors) and responds to declining revenue from fewer fans attending by funding a poorer squad that circle will turn into a downward spiral. Fans turn up when they are excited not when the chairman asks them to watch an economy 7 side and unfortunately for chairmen and owners that means investing up front in the team and coach in the hope it puts bums on seats and brings success.

I am sure he wants it to be a self sustaining business which if it could be would obviously be great. I mean that stands to reason doesn't it but the trouble with this ambition is an RL club is not a traditional business with a guaranteed revenue stream. At times it will dip and as he has said he has had to put his own money in. What surprises me is anyone thinks this is out of the ordinary for an RL club. Most of them seem to hover around making a small profit to various degrees of loss.

Ultimately the solution is increased sponsorship, particularly off TV companies and I think increasing sponsorship is going to generate far more income than a couple of thousand on the gate average but he's the one who has to secure that. Crowd size ought not to matter. All the talk about SL running itself and growing the revenue for the game is I am sure fueled by a desire to do this.

I agree with most of this mate but don’t forget, we pay out more or less the full cap plus two marquee salaries. The players (squad) we have are probably as high a standard as we can expect in a salary capped sport. That’s the really sad part.

We have lost around 2,000 regular fans due to a combination of fixture uncertainty, competition format, apathy, lack of quality product and as others have said, annoyance at being messed about / taken for granted by the club.

2000 (fans) x 15 (home games) x £20 (average ticket price) = £600k.

Fix those problems first and I’m sure fans will return.

IMHO I think Wigan must have the largest back room staff of any team in the league, that’s what the £££ is being spent on. It seems the backroom staff is a retirement home for ex-players and I question are we seeing benefits on the pitch as this is the acid test?