Latics Sweating on Permit For Cho Won-hee

Wigan Athletic are keeping their fingers crossed that the officials at the Home Office will be lenient when it comes to granting potential new signing South Korea international Cho Won-hee a work permit.

Latics boss Steve Bruce explained that although Cho is a current South Korean international he missed 6 World Cup qualifiers last year when he was injured for a month so this puts in to jeopardy his acceptance for the permit which states:

1. A player must have played for his country in at least 75% of its competitive "A" team matches he was available for selection, during the 2 years preceding the date of the application; and

2. The player`s country must be at or above 70th place in the official FIFA World Rankings when averaged over the 2 years preceding the date of the application.


One way around him missing the required amount of games is the wording in section 1 which states `he was available for selection`, clearly if Cho was injured then he wasn`t available for selection so they shouldn`t count in the equation, straight forward? Is anything, Latics boss Steve Bruce tries to explain the situation to the press:

'We have known all about him because he has played in the Korean team, which is a very decent team, and he is typically Korean in terms of his athleticism and his work-rate'

'The problem we have got is the work permit criteria because, unfortunately, he missed a big chunk of the international games.

'About ten months ago they had six qualifying games in the space of a month and he missed the lot of them because of injury.

'We have weighed that up and will put our case to them on Monday and hope we can get him in them.

'It (the criteria) stands in our way because it would be a damn sight easier without it.

'There are rules and we have to abide by them but it has become a bit of a problem.'

Rules are rules but surely if the guy was injured then he wasn`t available so the six World Cup qualifiers shouldn`t count, it also sounds to me like this case has been dismissed and gone to appeal because the permit was due to be granted today and not as Steve Bruce is now saying Monday, we`ll wait and see.

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