DELETECITY

Your club · Wigan Athletic

Level with Sunderland, down on goal difference.

Wigan took one point off City in eight league games, so the rebuild barely touches them. Its one real bite comes in 2012/13: Sunderland lose three points, Wigan draw level on 36, and still go down on goal difference.

At a glance

Premier League seasons
4 of 9 · 2009/10 to 2012/13
Points taken off City
1 in 8 league games
Transfers with City
No transfers with City in these seasons.

Season by season: real → without City

  1. 2009/10Real: 16th, without City: 15th
  2. 2010/11Real: 16th, without City: 15th
  3. 2011/12Real: 15th, without City: 13th
  4. 2012/13Real: 18th, without City: 17th

The nine seasons

Wigan Athletic spent the first four of the nine seasons in the Premier League, 2009/10 to 2012/13, and the last five outside it. Against City they played eight league games, lost seven and drew one: 1–1 at home in October 2009. One point. Take City out and it comes off. Nothing else does.

So the rebuild moves Wigan by City’s place and little more. Sixteenth becomes 15th in 2009/10 and again in 2010/11, the free place, the one every club below City gets. Only in 2011/12 do they climb further: 15th to 13th on the same 43 points.

That season Manchester United lost 1–0 at Wigan, then drew 4–4 with Everton, and on 30 April City went top on goal difference. Take City out and United still lose at Wigan, and it no longer matters: nobody is close enough to punish it. United top the rebuilt table anyway.

2009/10

Minus 39

Wigan became the first team to lose two Premier League matches by eight goals in one season, 9–1 at Tottenham and 8–0 at Chelsea. Without City their goal difference is minus 39, and they finish 15th of 19 on 35 points, six clear of the drop.

2012/13

The cup, and the drop

Wigan beat City 1–0 in the FA Cup final with Ben Watson’s stoppage-time header, the club’s first FA Cup. Three days later they lost 4–1 at Arsenal and went down: the first FA Cup winners to be relegated from the English top flight in the same season.

Take City out of the league and the gap to safety closes to nothing. Beaten 2–0 at home and 1–0 away, Wigan keep all 36 points. Sunderland lose their Boxing Day win over City, and their 39 become 36. Level. Goal difference decides it: Sunderland minus 11, Wigan minus 23.

Wigan finish 17th of 19, the first club below safety. Reading and QPR go down with them, as they did for real.

The money

City paid Wigan nothing in reported fees, and in Wigan’s four Premier League seasons no player moved between the clubs.

Two deals came later, while Wigan were outside the Premier League: Emyr Huws on loan from City in summer 2014, and Jack Byrne from City for an undisclosed fee in January 2017. By the /transfers/ rules, neither counts in Wigan’s totals.

Every season, club by club

Positions are real of 20 and rebuilt of 19; see How it works.