The long inevitable collapse of Sheffield Wednesday under the malignant ownership of Derek Chansiri is now in full swing, despite the best efforts of Barry Bannan and co to hold things together on the field - Jon Hore (@j_ho9) is this week’s oppo fan.
Well, it's been bleak, but with a draw at Wrexham and now a whole win at Portsmouth perhaps not the cakewalk many expected, so how has the start been on the pitch?
I don’t think we could have hoped for a lot more really. We have to be realistic - the squad is paper thin and isn’t Championship standard, so there are going to be loads of games when we get turned over and we’ll take a couple of pummelings along the way. But the players love Henrik Pedersen and are giving him everything which is a credit to them given everything happening off the pitch with non-payment of wages. We’ve shown that we’re not going to be a pushover and teams are going to have to take us seriously. If you come with the wrong mentality, like Pompey did last week, then we’ll shock you. It’s been great to see some of the youngsters putting their hand up and rising to the challenge.
Sheff Wed in the league so far…
Leicester 2-1 Sheff Wed Vestergaard 54, Faes 87 – Chalobah 26
Sheff Wed 0-3 Stoke Manhoef 1, 69, Mubama 46
Wrexham 2-2 Sheff Wed Moore 15, 31 – Bannan 63, Cadamarteri 81
Sheff Wed 0-2 Swansea Vipotnik 50, Ronald 81
Sheff Wed 0-3 Bristol City Amass og 6, Riis 18, Mehmeti 32
Portsmouth 0-2 Sheff Wed Bannan 12, Brown 50
Thoughts on Henrik Pedersen, other than he must be bloody mad to take this on?
Obviously bonkers to take it on, but must have done it in the hope that a takeover will materialise and he’ll get the chance to take the club on with new non-mental owners. I hope he does because he’s a great guy and it’s a pretty thankless task for your first managerial role. I’m really pleased that we’ve managed to persuade him to stay as he was a key part of Danny Rohl’s coaching staff and has a great relationship with the players who already loved him. He’s spoken about his affinity for the club and the city with his family settled here, and it’s difficult to see anyone coming in from outside the group and being able to squeeze as much out of this group of players.
What sort of team can we expect this Saturday?
A mish mash of experienced pros and youngsters being held together by Barry Bannan still dominating the midfield in Championship football matches at 35. After losing 14 players and only bringing two in, our squad is paper thin, and we’ve already been set back further by injuries to Nat Chalobah (shock) and our star young keeper Pierce Charles. The knock-on effect of the ongoing clusterfuck is we’re having to give youth a chance, and the U21s performed admirably in Carabao Cup wins against Bolton and Leeds. Off the back of promising showings in those games 19-year-old Ernie Weaver and 18-year-old George Brown earned their first Championship starts last week and both put in a great performance so they’ll be looking to carry that on in their home debuts.
We usually ask how the transfer window went but I guess that's a bit superfluous this year?
Yep, being under three seperate transfer embargoes for 99% of the window does tend to make it pretty depressing. We lost 14 players, including Josh Windass and Michael Smith who exercised their option to walk out of their contract after two consecutive months without pay. Despite the embargoes being lifted at the end of the window, outside of the emergency loan of Cardiff’s fourth choice keeper, the only player we’ve signed is Man Utd left back Harry Amass, and the only reason we were given the go ahead to sign him was that Utd agreed to cover every penny of wages and other expenses for the duration of his loan. Other Prem loan deals were lined up on deadline day but got scrapped by the EFL because the parent clubs wouldn’t give the same commitment on finances and Chansiri couldn’t evidence that he’d be able to cover costs. Wages we’re being covered, so we’re talking just a few grand on accommodation and bonus payments here. At the time of writing we’re back under three different embargoes for reporting future financial information, insufficient future funds and HMRC reporting.
Ins >>> Harry Amass, 18, LB, Man Utd, Loan >>> Ethan Horvath, 30, GK, Cardiff, Loan
Outs >>> Djeidi Gassama, 21, LW, Rangers, £2m >>> Akin Famewo, 26, CB, Hull, Free >>> Josh Windass, 31, AM, Wrexham, Free >>> Callum Paterson, 30, CF, MK Dons, Free >>> Mallik Wilks, 26, RW, Pendikspor, Free >>> Pol Valentin, 28, RB, Preston, Free >>> Michael Smith, 33, CF, Preston, Free >>> Michael Ihiekwe, 32, CB, Blackpool, Free >>> Anthony Musaba, 24, RW, Samsunspor, Undisclosed >>> Stuart Armstrong, 33, CM, Released >>> Ryo Hatsuse, 27, LB, Gamba Osaka, Free >>> Marvin Johnson, 34, LM, released >>> Ben Hamer, 37, GK, QPR, Free >>> Akin Famewo, 26, CB, Hull, Free
Right, off the pitch, what's happened since we last spoke a month or so ago?
It’s been relatively quiet with takeover rumours drying up and the club dying a slow and painful death at the hands of an erratic and volatile dictator that the EFL are apparently powerless to stop.
The movement to starve Chansiri of funds by boycotting games and not spending on kits/merch and in the ground seems to have gone well - attendances at the Leeds and Grimsby cup games were 10-15k down on what would normally have been expected - but actual protests have fallen a bit flat, and bar the five minute walkout at Leicester on the first day of the season, have had little impact or attention. We’ve been placed under three new transfer embargoes but to be honest that means little at the moment given the bigger picture. Nothing will change until the ownership does.
It’s been reported by local beat journos that the club might have to repay a large chunk of a £7.3 million loan secured against Hillsborough on September 30. Previously this loan has been rolled over with interest, but it looks like the creditors might finally have had enough and are going to call it in. This also coincides with payday for staff and players, so looks very likely that those payments are going to be missed again. Chansiri is still AWOL and is apparently trying to flog some of his Ugandan gold stash to pay it. All above board I’m sure.
If he can’t find the funds and the loan gets called in it’s looking increasingly likely that we're heading for administration.
What's the best and worst case scenario from here? What do you think will happen?
I honestly think shit could hit the fan next week. What that looks like I'm not really sure. Kieran Maguire knows a lot more about this stuff than me and he seems to admin is looking a lot more likely than it was a couple of months ago, at which point you’d hope that there’d be prospective owners circling to buy us on the cheap. It’s possible that’s what they’re waiting around for anyway given Chansiri’s wildly unrealistic asking price of £100m.
Best case - we take the points deduction and start again next year in League One with progressive, forward-thinking owners who can harness the club’s undoubted potential. Worst case, well I don’t want to think about that too much but if he can’t repay the loan on the ground, and the lender wants to use it as security, things could start to get messy pretty quickly. He, not the football club, owns the ground, so there’s a scenario where he puts the club into admin but keeps control of the stadium and therefore holds a lot of power in any takeover talks. It really wouldn’t shock me at all if he did something like that out of spite as one final ‘fuck you’.
QPR fans are being encouraged not to buy merchandise, food or drink inside Hillsborough tomorrow over and above the money they’ve already paid for their match ticket, in solidarity with the Sheff Wed fan attempts to starve Derek out of their club.
Links >>> Sheff Wed Official Website >>> Sheffield Star — Local Paper >>> London Owls — Blog >>> Owls Talk — Message Board >>> Supporters Trust
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