Wigan Athletic have become the first professional club in England to fall into administration during the Covid-19 crisis, only four weeks after a Hong Kong-based consortium took over the Championship club, promising to secure its future.

The EFL confirmed Wigan would incur a 12-point penalty, which automatically applies to any insolvency event, with a decision to be taken at the end of the season over whether it will apply this season or next. Such penalties are applied in a following season only if a club is already relegated, which renders the deduction meaningless. In Wigan’s case, with Paul Cook’s side 14th and eight points above the relegation zone, the penalty is likely to be applied this season and could push the club into League One.

As recently as 24 June, a businessman based in Hong Kong, Wai Kay Au Yeung, who had initially been a minority shareholder in the consortium, Next Leader Fund (NLF), was registered as the owner of more than 75% of the club’s holding company.

The club stated on 4 June that under the EFL’s owners’ and directors’ test, the league had approved the sale to NLF by the owners since November 2018, International Entertainment Corporation (IEC), another Hong Kong-based, Cayman Islands-registered company, which owns a hotel and casino in the Philippines.

The EFL’s test and takeover process involves determining that a new owner has the money to buy a club and support it financially for at least the remainder of the season and the whole of the following season. However less than a month later and a week since Au Yeung was announced as the majority owner, the club has appointed the administrators Gerald Krasner and Paul Stanley, of insolvency practitioners Begbies Traynor.

https://www.theguardian.com/football...-kong-takeover

How can the new owners pass the EFL's owners and directors test - that supposedly guarantees financial support for the club up to the end of the following season - and then put the club into administration in under a month? Another damning comment on the EFL!