Jukesays wrote:
Not a perfect excuse I know But
I would guess engaging with the fans became a bit of a drag the way the fans forums went, nothing but chances for over zealous individuals who see themselves as no1 fans whi know better than the people in charge whether that be the management, the coaches and even the players at times.
At the same time there was the constant criticism on facebook/forums like this etc of leneghan and Wayne for a whole host of ridiculous reasons (yes there were issues in there at timesbuy they were blown up to 10x times what they were).
There seemed to be a whole group of people who for whatever reason for around 5 years seemed to WANT leneghan and Wane to fail and to be honest only on the last 5/6 weeks has thought subsided some what.
IMO that's a big part of a lot of the malaise around the club and coupled with a lot of the other things I pointed out its contributed tona lack of enthusiasm around the place.
DESPITE 3 GF finals a world club challenge and cc final appearances.
The club have no doubt made a lot of mistakes in that period but to answer the other poster who commented on my post I would argue that 80% of the things the club have done is right and if 20% was wrong that's not too bad.
BUT I'd guess that 80% of posts/comments etc. Are negative with 20% positive.
I'd just ask people to try and be fair in both criticism and praise and imo that just doesn't seem to happen not only with regards to Wigan, its management, coaches and players but the game in general (and to an extent life in general).
This, unfortunately.
It's difficult to quantify how much damage a certain clique of negative fans have done to the club, but it can't have had no impact at all.
The problem these days is that any malcontent - and we seem to have more than most - isn't just a terrace bore any more. Now he can speak to the nation through the internet, and while lots of people will ignore these guys, others come to regard them as gurus ... as we saw on the other site (where some posters were so instinctively hostile to IL's regime that it was difficult to believe they weren't some kind of 5th column, and yet they attracted a herd of sheep-like yes men).
My main concern over the years has been that we know IL reads this forum. Given that he's pumped his own cash into the club and led us on multiple trophy-winning campaigns, how must he feel to see his name dragged constantly through the mud? There've been times when I'm amazed he's lasted this long.
I'll freely admit that I lost heart earlier this season. I feared relegation and felt that if we dropped, that would be it. That there'd be no way back and we'd go the same way as Bradford etc. I made posts on here - mainly calling for Lam to be removed and for a better recruitment policy - and I now regret them, because yet again IL has led us towards sun-lit uplands.
I'm not saying the guy's perfect, but compared to the previous administration, when a local journo told me you could ring the club at any time of the week and no one would even answer the phone - there wouldn't even be an answering machine! - it's clear to see that we could be in much, much worse hands.
Get upset if things go wrong, by all means. But keep it in perspective.
