Six players have handed in their notice over unpaid wages with the club operating under a strict transfer embargo
My 2024-25 season started at Sheffield Wednesday. Warm August sunshine, raucous Hillsborough, 4-0 home win and Danny Rohl signed up to a new contract. New season optimism is a powerful drug, one that distracts from most negative inflections. Sheffield Wednesday felt like they might finally be going places.
That is the first lesson in this calamitous mess: leadership will always be instructive in the end. You can sign players, keep managers and win matches emphatically, but all are ultimately only short-term, temporary relief. If the top of a football club is rotting away, the furniture will eventually get water damage.
The nightmare scenario has arrived. Sheffield Wednesday have repeatedly not paid their players on time, but more thought goes to the club staff who have suffered similar treatment and are likely not to have the same financial security as those on the pitch.
Six players, we are told, have handed in their notice and are free to negotiate exits from their contracts. A transfer ban has been imposed that will last until 2027. Barry Bannan, an immensely popular servant, has left.
Rohl, that pillar of Sheffield Wednesday optimism, has made it clear that he is sick of managing with a backdrop of chaos. Most of his support staff have seen their contracts formally expire.
Danny Rohl is a contender to succeed Ruud van Nistelrooy at Leicester City (Photo: Getty)
In some quarters, that has led to accusations towards Rohl of jumping ship when the club needs him most. But he is just a manager and must look after his own career eventually. Supporters have no choice but to stick; nobody else can be blamed for wanting out.
The training ground underwent improvements this summer that have not yet been finished. No pre-season tour has been announced. No pre-season fixtures are currently scheduled and the season starts in six weeks.
Thoughts return to the optimism of last August. Now few can even bear the thought of being back at Hillsborough. When they do, outright mutiny will be prevalent.
The club’s official supporters trust this week called for a boycott on all merchandise and retail.
It goes without saying: Sheffield Wednesday need a new owner and a new era. If lasting damage has already been inflicted, football clubs are resilient beasts and an expedited sale may allow some catch-up on lost time. But time ticks and supporters fear an explosion to match the implosion they have witnessed.
Dejphon Chansiri, Wednesday’s owner, has used the club’s website to hit back at external criticism and vowed that he will always seek the best eventually for the club.
Those claims fall entirely upon deaf ears for as long as reports suggest a significant gap between what Chansiri expects from his sale and what potential buyers value the club at. Apologies have been made for the late payments; few are prepared to accept them.
There is a doomsday coming, if nothing changes soon. It may start with a significant points deduction, both for failing to pay wages on time and for continuing to owe money to other clubs.
If that causes Championship relegation, which has now reached the point of clear probability, Wednesday will only become less attractive to buyers and Chansiri will only journey further from his intended sale price.
Then comes administration and who knows what. The knowns are scary; the unknowns are worse.
It is relevant that it wasn’t always like this. Some Wednesday supporters have pointed the finger at governing bodies for allowing Chansiri to pass their suitability test for football club owners. But he was a rich man intent on investing who followed through on that promise.
Money may have been wasted, but for years money was at least available. You can’t ban people on a hunch of what they might do in five years. More on that later.
There should be no “gotcha” here. Wednesday supporters who championed Chansiri early in his tenure may feel great regret, but no shame. We come to football, and stick with it, because we seek hope, belief, joy and celebration.
Anyone who purports to offer all four will generate faith – that is merely human nature.
This is a catastrophe for Sheffield Wednesday, but the tendrils of emergency spread wide. A football ecosystem – division, league, pyramid – is only as healthy as its sickest member. To those supporters of other clubs who may delight in point-scoring and crowing, know this: it can always happen to your club.
There is more that unites than divides us. “We’re all Wednesday aren’t we,” so the chant goes. It’s true, too.
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As the wait for the independent football regulator (IFR) goes on, thoughts turn to its most useful intended power.
English football is badly lacking a suitability test for club owners that extends beyond the initial point of contact and sale. The IFR raises the possibility of an ongoing assessment that has the means to enforce mediation and the removal of owners in the most egregious cases.
That has to become reality. At too many clubs, problematic situations are made dire through stubbornness or a lack of acceptance from those in positions of authority that they have become unfit for purpose.
Supporters, even at clubs that have board presence, are left powerless other than through lengthy protest movements. Leaning on the IFR for help is a point of necessity.
Nobody wants to be the test case that forces change, but Sheffield Wednesday are the closest we have. Their own future is deeply uncertain. The only conviction comes when detailing just how close a historic football club is to the edge of its own abyss.
This is a multitudinal mess. Wednesday are a headache for governing bodies, for HMRC, for the clubs owed money, for players who clamour for certainty and for the lower-paid employees who need to pay bills.
But most of all, and as ever, our final thoughts should be with supporters. This is supposed to be a time of great promise, of scouring websites and headlines in search of transfer news, of beery pre-season friendlies and new shirts.
In S6, they fear the headlines and cannot bear the news. What is the point, when each revelation paints a new layer of pain and frustration?