Chris DUNLAVY
A FRESH TAKE ON FOOTBALL

MONEY MATTERS: Big money ownership makes it increasingly difficult for clubs like Salisbury to compete Inset: David Sharpe
PICTURE: Ric Mellis

DAVID Sharpe always dreamed of running a professional football club. Until, that is, he discovered how much it cost.
Sharpe was just 23 when he acquired ownership of Wigan Athletic from his grandfather, Dave Whelan, in 2015.
Whelan had bought the club 20 years earlier, when the Latics were a struggling Division Three side, and was broadly typical of the sort of person who owned a lower league team in the mid-...