St pete wrote:
He constantly posts on here how many home grown players are in the squad. He constantly tells us how many kids play for England that are on wigans books. He constantly tells us Wigan produce more players than any other towns.
And we do, what is your point? You go on about us being a buying club but who doesn't sign players from other clubs? We buy players to compliment the squad we have here not to force the youngsters out. It's laughable for it to be suggested that Wigan do anything other then look after their youngsters and give them chances to progress. They even let them leave for fresh challenges when they want to because we'd rather have money to re-invest (in all areas, not just transfer fees) then unhappy players on the books.
Look at Wigans side from the GF if you think our club developed players are being held back. Tomkins, Charnley, Goulding, Thornley, Mossop, McIlorum, Hansen, Farrell, O'Loughlin, Crosby and Hughes all came through our system. We have just short of a whole third of England's squad for Saturday made up of Wigan produced players. We've just had an England academy team playing a series against Wales with half of them being Wigan products. We're the Grand Final holders, Challenge cup holders and Academy grand final winners and they're all facts.
A jibe that we're a 'buying club' won't see too many Wiganers losing much sleep but it just doesn't make sense (a buying club is Salford or Warrington). Don't spout off about our youth system when we buy players? Why not?! We buy players and improve them (Smith, Taylor, Green etc being examples) to play them alongside a whole heap of locally produced internationals.
