Key player is Whelan ’n’ dealing
GARRY COOK insists Wigan Athletic’s prospective new owners are committed to delivering a club to make Dave Whelan proud.
Cook – a key figure in Sheikh Mansour’s takeover of Manchester City in 2008 – has been instrumental in negotiations with Hong Kong-based hotels and leisure group International Entertainment Corporation over the past six months after being asked to find a buyer by chairman David Sharpe.
A deal that will see Whelan sell the League One promotion-chasers after a 23-year reign that includes eight seasons in the Premier League and an FA Cup win in 2013 is close.
Cook said: “I think it’s fair to say that the football club is the closest it has ever been, in terms of a sale, and my belief is that a deal is close.
“I have known the Whelan family for the best part of 30 years, from my time working at Nike, and when David Sharpe asked me to join the board and take a look at the club, I was happy to help.
“Pretty quickly we started discussing the possibility of selling because I knew there were people out there ready to invest.
“I said that the time could be right for the family to sell after they intimated that they might be open to offers if they could find the right people to take the club forward.
“Wigan has all the infrastructure of a Premier League club and has some recent history of being in the top division. David Sharpe has accepted that a change of ownership is the way forward.
“David is doing this in the best interests of Wigan. He has worked to find the right people, with the right resources, to carry on the legacy that the Whelan family have delivered for the last three decades.”