It is 4.30pm and as a new season begins inside the King Power Stadium, more than 2,000 Sheffield Wednesday fans can be found making a stand on the other side of locked turnstiles.
“I don’t care about Dejphon (Chansiri),” they sing. “He don’t care about me. All I care about is Sheffield Wednesday.”
A sold-out end is almost empty at kick-off and remains so until the opening five minutes have been played. Some do not make it inside to see Nathaniel Chalobah give the visitors an unexpected lead against Leicester City in the 26th minute, such is the backlog to gain entry.
Not that it mattered. At the end of a chaotic summer, a draining close season of late wages, upheaval and anxiety, a protest against club owner Chansiri illustrated the growing desperation for change.
“The whole protest movement, it’s something that goes against what you’re about as a fan,” says Otto Brookes, a Wednesday supporter handing out leaflets calling for Chansiri to sell up.
“You want to support your team and the players to feel supported, especially in these circumstances. But there comes a point where you have to say if you keep funding the person in charge of the club, there’s not going to be anything left.”
And that was the nagging concern on a day when Wednesday fans chose to draw a line in the sand. There had been low-scale protests against Chansiri last season but supporters have spent the summer mobilising against the Thai businessman.
The Sheffield Wednesday Supporters’ Trust has urged fans to boycott official merchandise and stay out of their seats for the opening of the new Championship season at Leicester City.
The vast majority obliged and, with concourses at full capacity, turnstiles were closed down by stewards 50 minutes before kick-off. That left the bulk of a 3,500 away support making their feelings abundantly clear.
“Dejphon Chansiri, get out of our club,” was sung on repeat and a loud cheer greeted the arrival of a plane trailing a banner that read, “Dejphon Chansiri out” in the clear blue skies above the King Power.
One banner depicted Chansiri as Derek ‘Del Boy’ Trotter from the sitcom Only Fools and Horses. “This time next year, we’ll be bankrupt,” it said. Another had United States President Donald Trump wearing a “Make Wednesday Great Again” baseball cap.
The mood was defiant as fans queued to gain entry long into the first half but it did not mask another unedifying chapter of Chansiri’s reign.
“It’s hard to enjoy anything,” says Neil Atkinson, a lifelong supporter among those to see Wednesday’s season begin from outside Leicester’s home.
Neil Atkinson was among the fans protesting on Sunday (Phil Buckingham/The Athletic)
“How can you when your club is falling apart? The club means a lot to people. Most of the things I do in life are based around football. There are old people here and it’s all they know. Football is what gets them through, regardless of results. We’ve all known hard times before but this is ridiculous. This is way past hard times.”
And his feelings towards Chansiri, the man who has owned Wednesday since 2015? “They get worse every day,” he says. “The guy came in and spent a lot of money but he’s never learned from his mistakes. Do the right thing and go.”
“It’s been a summer of chaos, hasn’t it?” says Brookes, summing up Wednesday’s preparations for the new campaign. “It’s gone so far past worrying about what players we’re signing or what the starting XI is going to be, because it’s now about the survival of the club.”
Few teams have known a pre-season anything like the one that drew to its close at the weekend. Catastrophic would be too kind.
Hillsborough has been where hope has withered ever since a stripped-back squad reported back at the end of June.
Renovated pitches at the club’s training ground at Middlewood Road were initially not ready and the players who remained, with the bulk in salary arrears, were forced to train on artificial surfaces until beginning a week-long training camp at England’s St George’s Park base.
Adding to the farce was the absence of a senior coaching team. Danny Rohl, head coach for the previous 18 months, had already signalled his intention to leave and only briefly returned in order to agree his eventual exit on July 29.
A decision to name his one-time assistant, Henrik Pedersen, as his successor was announced two days later but by then, more key personnel had moved on. Attacking figureheads Josh Windass and Michael Smith were allowed to leave as free agents in a summer exodus that has also seen Pol Valentin, Callum Paterson and Akin Famewo depart. The July sale of Djeidi Gassama, who joined Rangers for £2.2million ($3m), was a rare case of transfer money being recouped in Chansiri’s reign.
Captain Barry Bannan’s decision to commit his future to the club he joined in 2015 offered a glimmer of hope to supporters but that confirmation arrived on a day players had chosen to boycott a proposed friendly at Burnley.
Wednesday, who did not play a single pre-season friendly in public and visibly tired in the closing stages of their season opener, had been scheduled to visit the Premier League side’s training ground eight days before the Leicester match but the collective decision was made not to fulfil the fixture.
That prompted a statement from the players, who have seen salaries arrive late in four of the past five months. Full settlements only came on Friday, 48 hours before the Leicester game.
“We stand together in support with all our colleagues employed by the club who have been affected,” read the statement. “Players and staff are now feeling real, practical impacts in their professional and personal lives and we are extremely concerned at the lack of clarity regarding what is happening and when this will be resolved.”
That invited a temporary question mark over the Leicester game going ahead but dialogue between the club, Professional Footballers’ Association and EFL last week soon allayed those fears. Players stressed there would be “no downing of tools”, despite just 15 senior professionals remaining.
The EFL has kept a close eye on Wednesday this summer but has limited powers. It stresses that Chansiri has not met the threshold for disqualification under its owners and directors test, though pressure was placed upon the club to settle debts before the season got underway.
Sheffield Wednesday fans make their feelings known (Phil Buckingham/The Athletic)
Both the Premier League’s solidarity payment (£2.7m) and the monthly EFL basic payment (£460,000) were handed to Championship clubs last week, enabling Wednesday to pay all outstanding salaries to players and staff, as well as a small number of transfer payments to other clubs.
That lifted the EFL embargo that Wednesday have spent the summer working under but restrictions remain. No fees, for either loans or permanent transfers, can be paid by Wednesday until the summer of 2027 after surpassing 30 days of late payments since July 1.
The EFL has made it clear that the crisis must be curtailed. It outlined a wish to see a “strong, stable and competitive Sheffield Wednesday” in a statement issued 48 hours before the Championship season began, either through Chansiri addressing funding problems or “make good on his commitment to sell to a well-funded party, for fair market value”.
Those final words were telling. A statement from Chansiri on June 26, his only communication to fans all summer, revealed that a £40m basic offer for his shareholding from a U.S.-based consortium had been rejected since the end of last season.
The EFL has since been given no indication that Chansiri is close to selling but there is growing anger towards the governing body over the possibility it might yet make Wednesday’s challenge all the harder. A points deduction is among the punishments available for the late payment of wages, a step that could bring another deficit to overcome.
“F*** the EFL,” was the blunt chant from the away fans in the closing stages, once Bannan had been dismissed for a second yellow card.
Barry Bannan leaves the field following his red card (Malcolm Couzens/Getty Images)
Even in a 2-1 loss, the trip to Leicester amounted to an afternoon of escapism for Wednesday’s supporters. There was sympathetic ovation from Leicester fans once the protest ended after five minutes and stoic defending was eventually undone by second-half goals from Leicester defenders Jannik Vestergaard and Wout Faes.
It was enough to feel pride in their club, but it only provided a pause to the worry.
Saturday brings a first game of the season to Hillsborough when Stoke City visit but it remains unclear how many supporters will get to see it after Sheffield City Council closed the North Stand, which bears Chansiri’s name in the seating pattern, last month.
Concerns around the stand’s structural integrity must be addressed in the coming days or there will be a need to rehouse thousands of season ticket holders. The North Stand accounts for roughly 9,000 of Hillsborough’s 39,000 seats and Atkinson is among those who cannot say if he will be able to attend Stoke’s visit.
“I have a season ticket in that stand and I’ve had no email or confirmation about where I’ll be sitting next week,” he says. “It’s six days from now and we still don’t know. It’s the lack of communication and transparency that’s really poor. If you’re in hard times, at least communicate with people.”
Pedersen is at least trying that. The Dane is a likeable, calming figure leading Wednesday through their prolonged crisis. Sunday’s bench included seven players aged 21 or under but it was not until the 87th minute that a threadbare Wednesday team went under against an opponent relegated from the Premier League last season.
Pedersen admitted afterwards that “five or six” Wednesday players had travelled separately from the main squad on the eve of the game, staying in a nearby hotel to aid preparations. He did not know if those players had been left to foot the bill themselves. The majority had made the one-hour coach journey to Leicester on the morning of the game to save costs.
“I am sitting here with a very proud feeling,” Pedersen told reporters in his post-match press conference. “It has been some tough, tough weeks.”
And every indication is that there will be many more to come for Wednesday until Chansiri finally grants the wishes of a beleaguered fanbase.
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)