The firm which looked after the administration and sale of Wigan Athletic has warned that The Latics will not be the last football club to follow the same path as it starts to make its final moves in the long drawn out saga.
Begbies Traynor, the administrators of Wigan Athletic AFC Ltd, has filed its last report in court and with Companies House, a process which begins the move of the company into liquidation.
It comes after the League One club's deal to be taken over by a consortium led by Bahraini businessman Abdulrahman Al-Jasmi was completed at the end of March.
The club, which have just retained their place in the league for next season, first entered administration in July 2020.
The sale to Phoenix 2021 Ltd, owned by Al-Jasmi, was completed after a deal with a Spanish consortium collapsed at the start of January, after it was initially blocked by the EFL.
In the newly published report, Begbies Traynor has set out the key objectives it achieved since July 1 2020, confirmed that Wigan Athletic AFC Ltd will now enter liquidation and the process of paying creditors will begin.
The firm said it had secured the survival of the club, fulfilled the fixtures of the 2019/20 season and avoided a 15-point deduction for not meeting specified financial requirements of the EFL.
An appeal against the 12-point deduction imposed by the EFL on entering administration was brought but was unsuccessful.
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The firm added that it also was able to pay staff and player wages for June 2020 and deferrals from earlier months as well as pay staff and player wages from July 2020 until the point the club was sold.
The report also shows that Begbies Traynor resolved a position with the Hong Kong-based owner and largest creditor (debt £24m), to include waiving any entitlement to dividend to enable other creditors to be paid, and to allow other funds from connected companies, which would otherwise be paid to the owner, to be used to pay the administrators’ fees.
Football creditors have also been paid in full to the amount of about £7m while funds have been ring fenced to pay a minimum of 25p per pound to non-football creditors.
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The firm has also repaid the soft loan of c.£170,000 made by the Official Supporters Club to the administrators which enabled emergency payments to suppliers to enable the remaining fixtures of the 2019/20 season to be completed.
Paul Stanley of Begbies Traynor said: "We achieved everything we said we would on day one of being appointed as administrators.
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"The worst-case scenarios that were envisaged by many observers, including the death of the club, have been successfully avoided. The process of paying creditors will begin.
"Our strategy from day one was geared towards the three key objectives of saving the club, finding a buyer and leaving the club and the fans in a position to be able to enjoy good times again in the future.
"I’m pleased this has been achieved and we are now able to begin the formal process to pay creditors.
"Wigan Athletic was not the first football club to enter administration and it certainly won’t be the last.
"The fact that we were able to achieve what we set out to do during a global pandemic will come to be a textbook example of how to manage the administration of any historic sporting institution, let alone a football club."