{"id":584712,"date":"2025-11-21T12:47:39","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T12:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/584712\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T12:47:39","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T12:47:39","slug":"administration-a-crumbling-ground-and-4-points-sheffield-wednesday-fans-have-not-felt-this-excited-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/584712\/","title":{"rendered":"Administration, a crumbling ground and -4 points: Sheffield Wednesday fans have not felt this excited in years"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It is fair to say things haven\u2019t gone swimmingly since I last visited Hillsborough<\/a> in the spring of 2023. Sheffield Wednesday were top of League One back then, on a 22-game unbeaten run under Darren Moore, the best form of any side in the country. There was tangible excitement, and promotion to the Championship followed that summer. Then came a downward spiral: Wednesday went through three managers, stopped paying players and staff, closed a crumbling North Stand and were plunged into administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The club are now bottom of the Championship with -4 points and more deductions likely. They have barely a dozen senior players and some kids filling in, who keep getting injured under the strain of playing professional football twice a week. The stadium is decaying, having barely been touched since its redevelopment before Euro 1996. A much-needed new training complex is a distant dream.<\/p>\n

And yet, there is excitement on the terraces again. The club\u2019s despised owner, Thai tuna magnate Dejphon Chansiri<\/a>, is gone, and bidders are lining up to take on the project. A mystery donor has lent the club \u00a31m to get back on its feet. The EFL has allowed a couple of free signings and Liam Cooper, the former Leeds United captain, has joined Henrik Pedersen\u2019s side.<\/p>\n

Owls fans have flocked back to their tired old sanctuary, wanting to feel something again.<\/p>\n

\"Fans<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Fans queue outside the ground the day after the club entered administration (Getty Images)\"Young<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Young Sheffield Wednesday fans celebrate the departure of owner Dejphon Chansiri (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must be one of the first teams ever to celebrate administration,\u201d says Tom Scott of the Sheffield Wednesday Supporters\u2019 Trust. \u201cThe last six or seven years have been pretty desperate. He [Chansiri] was embarrassing us quite regularly with strange statements and odd decisions \u2013 losing Darren Moore was a good example \u2026 It became a proper chore to drag yourself to the ground and sit among protests and bad atmospheres and bad performances. It got pretty heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Negativity would be understandable on both sides of Sunday\u2019s derby match when Sheffield United visit Hillsborough. Two grand old clubs in a passionate sporting city are languishing in the Championship\u2019s relegation zone, and they meet like a couple of haggard prize fighters well past their best. \u201cI think it will be quite a poor game of football,\u201d Scott laughs. <\/p>\n

Yet Hillsborough will be bouncing. An expected 33,000 fans will turn out on a freezing afternoon with nothing but local pride on the line, and despite the game being shown live on ITV. \u201cHey ho Sheffield Wednesday\u201d will reverberate around the ground before kick-off. And this is really what the next owner is buying \u2013 not lucrative assets or a gleaming stadium or high-value players, but a 150-year-old cultural institution that matters to its people.<\/p>\n

\"Wednesday<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Wednesday manager Henrik Pedersen says he is determined to stabilise the club (Getty Images)\"Fans<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Fans have returned to fill Hillsborough in recent weeks (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

That was not how Chansiri saw the club. When I spoke to fans two years ago there was a sense that perhaps he deserved a little credit, for spending plenty of his own money, for learning to stop making wild public statements, such as his ill-judged interview with the Sheffield Star a few years ago in which he told supporters to rustle up \u00a32m themselves to cover debts and wages or risk losing the club.<\/p>\n

By the end he had disappeared entirely from public view. While fans worried about whether their club would survive, Chansiri went into hiding and the last they heard from him was a statement on the club\u2019s website in July. The Independent tried to contact him for this article, via his tuna company, but did not receive a response. <\/p>\n

He was still in contact with staff at the club in the dying days, but they were at the end of their tether. They suffered missed or delayed pay in five months out of seven, and several employees had to defer mortgage payments. As one staff member told me, it felt like the club was already in a state of administration in the months before Chansiri left and the situation simply couldn\u2019t go on any longer.<\/p>\n

\"Dejphon<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Dejphon Chansiri, the outspoken former owner of Sheffield Wednesday (Getty Images)\"Fans<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Fans protest against owner Chansiri in the days before his exit (Getty)<\/p>\n

How do supporters reflect on Chansiri\u2019s reign now? \u201cIt was a total waste of time \u2013 his time, his money, and our time and money as well,\u201d says Scott. \u201cBy the end it had gotten a bit silly, there was just nothing positive happening. <\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of years ago there was still quite a lot of goodwill towards him for that initial spending spree, I suppose. People could see that he\u2019d tried and he talked a good game. But certainly after [2023], it all massively unraveled and it became clear that he really didn\u2019t know what he was doing, or particularly care about what he was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wednesday fans can take plenty of credit for forcing him out, strangling him of funds by staying away from games and not buying merchandise. And they can take all the credit for lifting the club off its knees, just as they promised they would. Administrators issued a call to arms and fans bought club memberships in droves to fill the coffers. Supporters raised \u00a310,000 in an hour to pay for the team\u2019s hotel for December\u2019s away trip to Blackburn. The Trust raised another \u00a370,000 in only two days. In the month since administration, millions of pounds have been poured back into the club.<\/p>\n

\"Supporters<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Supporters have been spending in the club shop to help boost the club’s finances (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The fractured relationship between club and supporters is slowly being repaired. \u201cWe designed a badge that has a Trust logo and then around the side it says, \u2018Paid for by the fans, for the club\u2019,\u201d Scott adds. \u201cThe club are putting that on the shorts of the players. That wouldn\u2019t have happened a few weeks ago [under Chansiri\u2019s rule].\u201d<\/p>\n

Most football fans don\u2019t demand much. Certainly, Wednesday fans do not have high expectations of European football every week; there are no delusions of grandeur at Hillsborough. They want reasonably-priced tickets and a decent pint and a team who care. They\u2019d like a well-run club where the people in charge listen to fans now and again. But perhaps all any football fan really wants is a bit of hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s surely our turn for at least some good to come,\u201d Scott says. \u201cEvery club around us seems to have had at least a period of nice ownership and sustained fun on the pitch. After 25 years outside the top flight, maybe it\u2019s our turn for some fun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8817],"tags":[748,393,4884,1620,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-584712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sheffield","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-sheffield","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115587767586011217","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}