The EFL’s tough stance over Sheffield Wednesday transfers has demonstrated their unhappiness with the way that Dejphon Chansiri is running the club. This is why they haven’t removed him.
Sheffield Wednesday’s transfer deadline day didn’t exactly go as the club might have hoped. Wednesday’s desperate financial position left them scrabbling around for whichever loan players they could bring in, and they ended up with just Harry Amass from Manchester United until January, while deals to bring in Jaden Heskey and Zépiqueno Redmond from Manchester City and Aston Villa collapsed.
The reason for this is understood to be a hard-line stance on the part of the EFL over who they can bring in. Wednesday are under a fee restriction, meaning that all transfers in and out have to be referred to their Club Financial Reporting United (CFRU), and the CFRU did not allow Wednesday to bring in anyone unless the full costs were borne by the parent club. This is highly unusual in loan deals, and it’s unsurprising that both City and Villa baulked at the suggestion. Redmond ended up going to Huddersfield instead.
Dejphon Chansiri hasn’t met the criteria to be forced out of Hillsborough yet
Sheffield Wednesday are trying to starve Chansiri out through a boycott and other protests, but the true levers of power remain with the EFL. The BBC have outlined why the League haven’t removed him from his position, and the short answer is that he hasn’t met the criteria by which this can happen yet.
“The EFL is able to charge clubs and owners over matters such as unpaid wages or failing to meet other financial obligations, which, if proven typically lead to fines and/or points deductions, and can force owners to divest their shares in some extreme cases,” they explained. “Chansiri’s ownership has not met the criteria for forced divesture, and the charges the EFL has brought against both the club and Chansiri are still at the written submissions stage, meaning final outcomes remain a while off.”
This may change with the introduction of the independent football regulator, who will eventually have the power to revoke licenses for football club owners, effectively forcing them out. But these changes have not yet come into effect and will not do so until at least November, meaning that there is no action that anyone can take in order to remove him from the club. Sheffield Wednesday are ultimately a business, and the EFL don’t have the power to force him to sell it or surrender his directorship.
There is precedent for the EFL being able to force an owner to sell a club. They made precisely this demand of Dai Yongge over Reading just last season. But there was one key difference between Yongge and Chansiri, in that Yongge had failed the Owners & Directors Test over the size of his debts and other legal issues in China. This allowed the EFL to force the sale of the club under a threat of expulsion. This eventually happened at the very end of the season.
Chansiri hasn’t yet arrived at this point, so as much as the EFL can do now is wait for him to do the right thing. The CFRU didn’t reject the loans of Jaden Heskey and Zépiqueno Redmond to try and force Chansiri out. They did so because they have so little confidence that Wednesday’s players will paid on time at the end of each month.
And it is precisely this sort of situation that led to the independent football regulator coming into being, but progress over getting it in place has moved glacially slowly and it’s come too late to prevent Sheffield Wednesday finding themselves in the position in which they are at the moment. Depending on the specifics of how it’s set up, the regulator could be more decisive in getting Chansiri out of Hillsborough, but for the moment he hasn’t hit the criteria yet, all of which hints strongly at why the regulator was needed in the first place.