Chapter 618: Vultures!

The FA Cup victory over Bolton gave Wigan a welcome change of pace, but there was little time to dwell on it.

With the third round out of the way, their attention returned to the Premier League, where Burnley awaited them in their next attempt to extend a season that had already surpassed every reasonable expectation.

For Dawson, the immediate concern was getting his players ready for the trip.

For the club’s recruitment staff, however, the days ahead brought an entirely different kind of pressure.

The club’s top-of-the-table position made them hard to ignore, and interest that had started as enquiries and tentative conversations was beginning to turn into something more substantial.

Premier League clubs were no longer the only ones keeping an eye on the Latics.

Teams from Italy and Germany had begun asking questions, too.

Wigan’s rise had given their players visibility few could have anticipated at the start of the season, and some clubs were now prepared to put real money on the table.

The first formal offer came from a direction few inside the club expected.

In the quiet of Tuesday morning, AC Milan, one of football’s most prestigious clubs, tabled an offer for Wigan’s Ezra Thompson.

The Italian side submitted a £40 million bid for the winger, a remarkable sum for a player who had been building his reputation in a Wigan shirt.

The offer arrived at the club’s administrative offices and quickly made its way to the people responsible for recruitment and negotiations, but that wasn’t the end.

It was followed by two more.

Werder Bremen formalised their interest in Ashley Fletcher with a £30 million offer, plus a further £5 million in potential add-ons.

Chelsea, meanwhile, returned for Jake.

Having previously tested Wigan’s resolve with a £25 million bid, the London club increased its offer to £35 million, with another £5 million available in add-ons.

The figures were substantial, even by Premier League standards.

For Wigan, they represented the sort of money that could change the direction of the club’s transfer business for years.

Yet the offers also presented a problem.

Dawson had already made it clear that he did not want to dismantle a squad that had brought Wigan to the top of the league.

Three of his attacking players were now the subject of official bids, and each transfer carried its own complications.

Ezra had become an important source of width and invention, Fletcher had just scored a hat-trick against Bolton, and Jake remained a major part of the team’s attacking options.

The staff could hardly ignore the financial implications, but they couldn’t pretend replacing those players halfway through a title challenge would be straightforward.

And just like that, the news began circulating before the club had made any public statement.

Transfer journalists reported the figures, football accounts picked up the stories, and the discussion quickly spread across social media.

For many supporters, the initial reaction was disbelief.

Forty million pounds for Ezra was an extraordinary amount of money.

At the same time, the combined offers for Fletcher and Jake suggested that Wigan’s success was beginning to attract the sort of attention normally reserved for established top-flight clubs.

Some fans were flattered that their players had attracted interest from Milan and Chelsea.

Others immediately began arguing that the club should reject every offer while the more anxious supporters pointed to Wigan’s history.

Their biggest sale had been Yaya Touré’s move to Manchester City in 2010, for a reported £28 million.

Now, within the space of a few days, the club was considering bids that individually approached or surpassed that figure.

For a fanbase accustomed to seeing their club operate on a very different financial scale, it was difficult to know whether to celebrate or worry.

One supporter posted, "£40m for Ezra and we’re top of the league. I don’t care how much money that is, you don’t sell him in January."

Another replied, "If we sell Jake and Fletcher in the same window, who exactly is supposed to score the goals? The recruitment team?"

A third was less interested in the numbers.

"Mike Danson, please don’t let this club make the same mistakes again. We’ve finally got something going here. Don’t cash in on everyone the moment the big clubs come knocking."

The reference to the club’s previous ownership struck a nerve.

Plenty of Wigan supporters remembered how quickly the club’s fortunes had changed in the past, and the prospect of losing important players just as the team was challenging at the top of the Premier League, a feat that numbered 1 to 7000 odds at the start of the season at the bookies, brought back uncomfortable memories.

Others tried to be more measured.

They acknowledged that £40 million for Ezra was serious money and that a club like Wigan could not afford to dismiss every major offer without considering its long-term future.

But even those supporters tended to agree on one point: selling several first-team players in January would be a gamble that could cost the club far more than it gained financially.

Then someone asked the question that changed the tone of the discussion.

"So who’s next? How long before someone comes in for Leo Calderon?"

When that statement began to circulate, the response was immediate.

Within minutes, the post had attracted replies from supporters who seemed personally offended by the suggestion.

Some called the account clueless while others accused it of intentionally inviting trouble.

One particularly irritable reply read, "They can keep their money. He’s not going anywhere."

Another supporter wrote, "There’s one thing I’ve ever been sure in my life, and that is that I am rioting if Wigan sell Leo while we’re on the up like this."

A few tried to point out that Leo was already one of the most valuable young players in Europe, making interest from bigger clubs almost inevitable.

But that did little to calm the discussion.

The replies quickly filled with arguments about loyalty, contracts and whether Wigan could realistically hold on to a player of his ability if one of the continent’s wealthiest clubs came calling.

For now, no official offer for Leo had been reported, aside from Manchester United’s offer, which had been rejected before the window even opened.

That distinction did little to settle the nerves of a fanbase that had spent the past several months watching their club achieve things they had scarcely dared to imagine.