Editors Blog: Looking ahead to the 1st July

If we accepted the fact that as of tomorrow we lose all the players who will be out of contract, then the club will lose a total of 19 players. We can't afford that many players to go even if a good chunk of them are youth players, they are players who could play a role next season.

We also have to think about Mauro Boselli who has now been sold as well, so we take our magical number of people leaving the club tomorrow up to 20, that is a rather high number for such a small squad that we have here at Wigan.

Out of the players leaving, the likes of Daniel Redmond, Jordan Mustoe and Robert Kiernan all have offers on the table and all you would hope would accept them as they have shown they could play next year in the Championship for the club. Youth players such as Rakish Bingham and Jesjua Cruyff also have offers on the table and again hopefully they will accept them.

Yet our recruitment drive can't stop there, we are going to need to sign at least another ten to twelve players to really increase the strength in our squad. Two have already been brought on board in Stephen Crainey and Chris McCann on free transfers, more could follow.

Thomas Rogne the Norwegian 22 year old defender is expected to complete his move to Latics at some point next week on a free transfer. That may not be the end of our free transfer poaching's as there are a fair few decent players floating about we could get on a free; an unnamed striker is rumored to be in talks with the clubs.

Don't think we don't have any money to spend, because we do have a bit. With the club in dire need of defenders it looks likely that we will be buying in our defensive options John Bradford (of Derby County) and Arron Creswell (of Ipswich Town) are both reportedly on the Latics radar. Signing those two would then fill our full back options, leaving us with just one more center back position needing to fill.

Of course the other big job is keeping hold of out players. According to reports we could be losing James McCarthy, Arouna Kone, Callum McManaman and Ali Al Habsi. Hopefully this comes down to pure speculation and these names can stay and we can build a squad around the core of players we already have.

Welcome though Ladies and Gentlemen to the silly season!