Dave whelan autobiography rangers

Dave Whelan's autobiography, Playing to Win, is out now, with all proceeds going to the new Wigan Boys Club.
Jordan hoped to escape at the end without running into the home side's owner, Dave Whelan, only to bump into his opposite number as he departed.
A refreshing book, rather like David Jason's autobiography because it deals with ordinary blokes who worked extremely hard to gain prominence in their fields.

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(Image by Sam Taylor)

Return of the Malk

Well, who could have seen that coming? Dave Whelan outing himself as a racist is probably the least shocking self-bigoting to happen in English football since Jamie Carragher’s autobiography came out. Although rather than just make some dodgy remarks about foreigners, Whelan went for full-blown anti-semitism.

The timing of his remarks couldn’t be worse, of course. He’s just made the controversial move to appoint the confirmed racist, homophobe and sexist Malky Mackay as the club’s manager. But hey, the guy deserves a second chance, right? Would we all want our text messages read aloud at an FA hearing? Haven’t we all subjected all of our employees to relentless sexual and racial abuse in our time?

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I can’t help but feel this reflects a sort of inherent powerlessness that football fans have. Sure, there might be sizeable majorities defending people like Mackay, Whelan and even Ched Evans but as the FIFA chaos shows, people in charge of football can basically do what t

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Whelan on ownership

When Hong Kong businessman Carson Yeung completed his takeover of Birmingham City last week, the Blues became the 10th Premier League side to go under foreign ownership.

But Dave Whelan, the man at the top of Wigan Athletic, won't be sat by the phone waiting for a call from any Asian entrepreneurs any time soon.

"Sheikhs don't come to Wigan. To come to Wigan you've got to be a pie eater, and the sheikhs are not pie eaters. So I do not expect any Sheikh to come anywhere near Wigan."

The story of Whelan and Wigan is one once so familiar in the Football League, but also one that is increasingly less common in the supposed international El Dorado that the top flight has become.

Raised in the town at a time when many of its industries which thrived in the Victorian era went into a slow, terminal decline, Whelan spent his entire playing career in the North West, first with Blackburn Rovers and then Crewe Alexandra, where he retired in 1966.

It was in his post-playing career where he made his fortune. After selling his Whela

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‘Being annihilated at home by your fiercest rivals? There are no words for that’ – our reporters’ biggest humiliations

Sunday’s hammering at the hands of Liverpool was a particularly chastening experience for fans of Manchester United — one they’re unlikely to forget anytime soon.

The Athletic’s reporters share some of their own footballing humiliations, including incredible hammerings, unbelievable collapses, and well-timed swimming lessons…

Nottingham Forest 1-8 Manchester United, 1999

Funnily enough, we always tended to do pretty well against United. We cost them a league title or two by winning at Old Trafford. We put them out of the FA Cup with 12,000 fans in their away end. Look online and you will find the old footage — “A Lesson in Football” — of the time Forest, my team, whacked them 4-0 en-route to winning the league (albeit now 44 years ago).

But then we come to what could be optimistically described as a nine-goal thriller beside the River Trent. One problem: Forest scored one of those goals, United got eight, and a baby-faced substitute by the name of Ole Gu