We will return bigger and stronger

Firstly, we would like thank every single supporter of Wigan Athletic for your work, ideas, donations and overwhelming support.

Many of you will be aware that the administrators of our Football Club were forced to make redundancies on Tuesday as the funds are not available to pay these staff under the circumstances we find ourselves in.

We understand that 50% of the full time non playing staff at Wigan Athletic have been made redundant, totalling 75 people.

The Supporters Club are devastated that this has been part of the process and whilst the funding we have raised as a body of fans uniting together will support the wages of the existing staff, we feel that we must press ahead with achieving our next target of £250,000 in order to safeguard more backroom jobs and support the Football Club to find a suitable buyer to take Wigan Athletic forward successfully.

We are now working with the administrators to ensure that the funds are used for the purposes for which they were intended:  to fulfil the fixtures for this season to safeguard the future of the football club.  

We can confirm today that the first contribution that the Let’s Hang On appeal will fund is the travel and accommodation costs for the team and associated backroom staff to fulfil our away fixtures until the end of the season.  This is being paid in full by the fund with the exception of the coach travel to Barnsley which has been kindly sponsored fully by our coach providers Eavesway Travel. We wish to thank them for this kind gesture of support which will ensure that the funds raised will stretch even further to support our club.

We will continue to liaise with the administrators and club officials on what essential costs may be required to be paid from the fund and we will update the supporters regularly on how the funding is being used. 

To those people in our family who have lost their jobs in the last 24 hours, we are thinking of you and we are going to do everything we can to return you to your Football Club.

We urge all fans, friends and family of Wigan Athletic to continue to support the Let’s Hang On appeal by donating, fundraising and sharing our story far and wide.

Please look out for further announcements on plans to keep pressure on the EFL to respond to our situation.

Thank you for EVERYTHING you are all doing. There are so many incredible people doing amazing things on behalf of Wigan Athletic Football Club. We WILL get our Football Club back and we WILL return better than we were before!