Whelan snubs Owen for Wigan.

Posted on June 17th, 2009 | 25 Comments |

Dave Whelan: Pooh-poohing Owen.
Dave Whelan: Pooh-poohing Owen.
Wigan Athletic chairman, Dave Whelan, a man who is seldom short for words (especially on “supergrass” Mike Ashley), has once again thrown his two’pennorth in; this time on the Michael Owen ‘I’m relegated, get me out of here’ saga.

Speaking yesterday, he said:

“We’ve not had the brochure,” adding;

“Would we be interested? No. One, his wages are too expensive. Two, has he got the urge, the bottle and the drive to do what the Premier League wants? It’s a big question.

“I hope he has because he has been a great player. I tried to sign him and said to his agent I would pay £15million to bring him to Wigan and let him leave whenever he wanted. I tried to sign him when he came back from Real Madrid. I told his agent I’d pay the £15million asking price and allow him to move on whenever he pleased, because I wanted him to be playing over here in readiness for the World Cup the following year.”

Of course, he was beaten there by a wise investor called Mr. Freddy Shepherd from Newcastle United.

Whelan continued in his characteristic, blunt fashion;

“But he’s looking a bit injury-prone now and loves his horses. I’m not criticising the lad, he has been a magnificent player and can still do a hell of a job for somebody, but I think he will want to go to a much bigger club than Wigan. Everton and Liverpool might think differently.”

Whelan was welcoming back bright young managerial prospect, Roberto Martinez to the Premiership club on a £1.5 million pound, 3 year contract. Martinez was previously signed by Whelan as a player, 14 years ago.

The urgency for Ashley and Joe Kinnear to renew Owen’s contract at around £90,000 per week for four years seems something of a distant memory now.

NUFCBlog Author: workyticket workyticket has written 1093 articles on this blog.

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Comment on this post

25 Responses

  1. well i am not sure i believe whelan about trying to sign owen

    he does tell a lot of bull

  2. Morning Workey

    Sounds a sensible decision regarding Owen from our illustrious leader’s ‘best frend.’
    I had almost forgotten how hard Keegan had been pushing to get MA to extend MO’s contract… thank god he didn’t, at least that was one of the better decisions he made.

    I think Whelan’s decision in signing Robert Martinez as a manager with potential is also sound.

  3. I don’t know about his bottle but it looked quite obvious to me that all his injuries had taken it’s toll on him.

    His legs look to have gone.

    Physio’s in sport always say ‘if you’ve got a knee injury, you’ve got a knee injury for life’

    I reckon that’s true as he just never looked the same player after that.

    Shearer was the same, although Shearer give a lot more as a player than Owen.

  4. Talking of signings, has anyone else spotted a massive howler by Liverpool? They were offered Richardson from pompey for £8m in Jan, but snubbed it and now they are going to pay around £17m for him! Nice business there Rafa. No doubt the scousers will defend Rafa as they are blinkered in their support. In fact people talk about us being blinkered, they should take a look at the scouse. They are worse than us. You should see some of their comments on Michael Ownen. They genuinely believe that he made some kind of niave mistake going to real madrid and are ready to forgive him when he goes to LFC in the summer! They still rate him as a player when everyone else is saying he’s finished.

  5. Stu & MT – agreed on both those things.

    MT – I think you mean Johnson though?

  7. WBA away for the first game then?
    MT – that beer could be sooner rather than later!

  10. Could be struggling to make that. Our daughters christening is on the 9th. Hopefully I can get away for half a day. Only fair seeing as I have to go to church on Sunday. Shudder.

  13. You said “only fair as I have to go to church on Sunday”. I said that’s usually when people go.

  14. I see our Jew friend from the South is still on Ed’s blog. Hilarious how I’m banned and he’s allowed to keep on posting.

  15. 52times – I’ve noticed that too. It seems as long as you keep registering under a different name, it doesn’t matter to Ed. I don’t think you can ban via anything but username on these wordpress blogs. If it was a forum you could ban via ip or range of ip’s.

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