Another season of struggle, improving slightly after a mid-term managerial change, can't have come as much of a surprise to the long suffering supporters of Sheffield Wednesday.

Overview

For the seasoned Championship supporter, Sheffield Wednesday are football’s equivalent of your wedding suit — seen twice a year, and always in the exactly the same manky state it was when you walked away from it last time.

The Owls were relegated from the Premier League 14 years ago and they’ve never once been remotely close to returning to the top flight since. In 2006/07, having picked off manager Brian Laws from a lower-league Scunthorpe United outfit that had humiliated them a couple of times in cup competitions, they roared home with a wet sail, winning nine and drawing three of their final 13 matches, but it was only good enough for ninth — four points shy of the play offs. That’s as good as it has ever got.

Mostly, football seasons at Hillsborough seem to follow a very set, soul destroying, pattern and 2013/14 has stuck to the script to the absolute letter. Summer optimism usually gives way to a dreadful start — this year was particularly bad with just one win from the first 17 matches and an early round cup exit at near neighbours Rotherham.

That usually results in a managerial sacking and, sure enough, Dave Jones was dismissed at the start of December after a 2-0 loss against Blackpool — the ninth permanent boss they’ve had since dropping out of the top division. Once the — often protracted — search for a replacement reaches a conclusion form improves for a while and indeed Wednesday went unbeaten for 11 matches, winning six, over the Christmas and New Year period. Usually it’s enough to scrape them into a safe league position — though not always, and they have had two separate stints in the league below over the last decade — at which point the season ends and the cycle begins again.

Sheffield Wednesday are what Sky’s self-satisfied Championship anchor Simon Thomas would almost certainly call, each and every time they’re shown on the satcaster’s sports channels, a “sleeping giant.” “Well, we’ve said it before, haven’t we? The potential at this club is massive, isn’t it? It just needs somebody to get hold of things here and make it take off, doesn’t it? But we’re just not sure if that person is ever going to come along, are we?” Don Goodman would almost certainly reply.

But while Hillsborough is still a wonderful sight to behold - looming large over the park as you approach by tram, four cavernous stands towering over the playing surface - an extra large, famous old stadium with a lot of seats in it doth not a sleeping giant make. MK Dons have a large shiny stadium. Rotherham have a large shiny stadium. Leeds United have a ground not dissimilar to Hillsborough. Sheffield Wednesday have seen other, supposedly smaller, clubs catch them up and roar past them into the distance — Hull City, Swansea City, Wigan Athletic for a time.

This looks like a club in need of one of two things. Either a particularly inspirational or wealthy new owner arrives and changes the club beyond all recognition as we have seen, for better or worse, at Chelsea, Manchester City, Wigan and elsewhere. The problem is these days the riches on offer in the Premier League makes clubs just a division below a very attractive proposition for exactly the sort of person you don’t want owning your football club so for every Dave Whelen or Sheikh Mansour we’ve seen half a dozen megalomaniacs, chancers and/or crooks turns up at Leeds, Portsmouth, QPR, Cardiff, Hull and so on. Current Owls chairman Milan Mandaric has a promotion against the ods on his CV at Portsmouth, when his team was led by Harry Redknapp, but he’s struggled to find that formula again either here or during a previous stint at Leicester.

Or a game-changing manager takes over in the Hillsborough dug out and has that Roberto Martinez/Brendan Rodgers effect on the place.

Following the latest change at the top, Wednesday plumped for Stuart Gray as their new number one, and that run of form over Christmas, and obvious improvements to the shape of the team and the style of play, suggest they may not have made a bad choice. But given that Dave Jones has always been a miserable sod at the best of times, and seems a good deal more adept at motivating nubile Welsh netball players than professional footballers these days, perhaps Gray has just befitted from not being Dave Jones in the eyes of the playing staff at Hillsborough. His appointment coincided with the loan signing of Sunderland’s Connor Wickham who scored eight times in 11 games — Wednesday have lost five of their last eight since he left.

Gray has always been one of those perennial assistants, and while it’s easy to prove this assertion wrong with high profile examples like Jose Mourinho, I’d say those sort of internal promotions fail more often than they succeed. Gray himself struggled previously at Southampton after stepping up from the backroom staff and Steve Kean, Steve Wigley, Sammy Lee, Phil Brown and others have all done likewise. He doesn’t immediately strike home as the sort of gamechanger that’s needed in these parts.

The Owls even contrived to blow not only the chance of a mouth-watering FA Cup quarter final against bitter rivals Sheffield United, but also what could have potentially been the easiest ever passage to the actual final, by losing in controversial circumstances in the fifth round at home to a Charlton side many QPR fans would say is the worst team the R’s have played this season. Their form seems to fluctuate depending on who is in on loan at that time - which as far as long term planning goes is about as shrewd as smoking 40 cigarettes a day.

Season now almost effectively over in mid-March attention is possibly already turning to 2014/15, but even given that extended preparation time it’s difficult to imagine this column reading a lot differently if this fixture is still on our list next term.

Interview

For the second time this season we welcome Owls fan Jon Hore to the hallowed LFW opposition profile — a man who spent his university days pulling my wayward clearances out of the air and trying to make something of them and now sits quietly in a dark room waiting for me to fire Sheffield Wednesday questions at him twice a season. It’s his round tomorrow night as well…

Assess Sheff Weds' season so far for us — struggle, managerial change, just about survive, pretty standard stuff this isn't it?

Yeah it's depressingly familiar. Save for a couple of League One promotions and an eighth place finish it the Championship under Brian Laws it's been the same for the last 14 years since relegation from the Premier League. This season was horrible up until the sacking of Dave Jones but thankfully Stuart Gray managed to turn us around, make us hard to beat and we have since dragged ourselves a reasonably safe distance away from the relegation zone. However since the absolute bottle job of a performance against Charlton in the FA Cup form has been very patchy. We'll have enough to survive, it helps there being so many awful teams below us, but it almost feels like the season is over already.

What did you make of the Dave Jones sacking - was it the right decision, should he have gone sooner, what sort of opinion is he held in at Hillsborough?

Without doubt the right decision. It got to the point where demolition Dave had sucked the life out of the club. The fans were disillusioned, the players didn't look bothered and with his baffling tactics and team selections there was no sign of results improving. Milan Mandaric showed admirable loyalty, he could have got rid a lot sooner without any complaints, but by the end all the goodwill Jones had built up by taking us up from League One had disappeared.

Who was your choice to replace him? What did you make of the Warnock rumours?

At the time of the sacking there was a real lack of quality candidates out there. I personally wouldn't have minded Warnock but I can see why it would never have worked, too many fans just couldn't accept it. I honestly didn't really know who I wanted to get the job, but in the end the promotion of Stuart Gray has proved a wise decision so Milan deserves some credit for that.

What's your opinion of Stuart Gray and how has he done so far?

I really like him and he's done a great job in difficult circumstances. He really picked up the dressing room and it's obvious the players want to play for him. He gave opportunities to the likes of Chris Maguire and Jose Semedo who hadn't got much of a look in under Jones, and just generally got us playing with a recognisable shape and made us a lot harder to beat. Admittedly he was lucky to have Connor Wickham when he first took over, his goals and overall contribution were a massive factor in our rise up the table. Since he went back to Sunderland we've struggled to find the net and wins have been harder to come by.

Who have been the stand out performers? Where are the weak links in the side?

Kieran Lee has been by far and away our best player this season. Gray has moved him into a central midfield role and he has really thrived. Great work rate, puts his foot in and really comfortable on the ball. Connor Wickham was outstanding but no longer with us, and Chris Kirkland has continued to show he's one of the best at this level. We're struggling a bit for goals at the moment, Leon Best and Benik Afobe have come in on loan and not really fired, so I'd probably pinpoint that as our main weakness at the moment.

Are things going to get a good deal better or worse for next season or more of the same?

Without a takeover happening it's difficult to look past it being more of the same next season. Until we get someone who is willing to properly invest in the team the best we can hope for his mid to lower table. Like a few teams at this level we rely too much on loan signings to provide the quality - it would be nice to have a few more good players that we actually own. At the moment Kirkland and Glenn Loovens, who has been outstanding since he joined, aren't contracted beyond the summer so it's important we get them signed up as soon as possible. Then it will be interesting to see how Gray goes about re-shaping the squad, with no money to spend we have to pray that he can bring in a couple of gems on free transfers.

Links >>> Official Website >>> Sheffield Star local paper >>> Wednesdayite Supporters Society >>> Owls Talk forum >>> Travel Guide >>> Owls Alive blog >>> Sheff Wed Mad site and forum >>> Owls Online forum

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Kaos_Agent added 03:03 - Mar 18 Nice profile Clive. If it's hard to keep faith with the R's, then it must be that much harder for the Owls supporters to do so in their situation. We've got lots of spare bodies, why not loan them one or two from our pail. They might even return wanting to play for the manager.
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parker64 added 08:33 - Mar 18 Interesting about Kieran Lee. He was only here for a short while but at the time I thought he looked physically weak. Another tidy player. Dropped down to Oldham played 100+ games and now doing well at Wednesday.
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QPunkR added 11:17 - Mar 18 Yeah I thought the same about Lee when we had him (albeit briefly)
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TacticalR added 19:35 - Mar 18 Thanks for your oppo report and to Jon. I don't care if sacking the manager is an annual event at Sheffield Wednesday, nobody deserves Dave Jones. Stuart Gray looked a good replacement, but I hadn't realised his fortunes were so closely tied to Connor Wickham.
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