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It’s fair to say that things haven’t been going well since then I last visited Hillsborough In the spring of 2023. Sheffield Wednesday were top of League One with a 22-match unbeaten run under Darren Moore, the best form of any team in the country. There was real excitement, and promotion to the Championship followed that summer. This was followed by a period of decline: on Wednesday three managers stopped paying players and staff, the North Stand was closed and closed. jump into administration,
The club is now bottom of the Championship with -4 points and the possibility of more relegations. They have barely a dozen senior players and a few kids who keep getting injured due to the stress of playing professional football twice a week. The stadium is in disrepair, having barely been touched since its redevelopment prior to Euro 1996. A much-needed new training complex is a distant dream.
And yet, there is excitement again on the rooftops. The despised owner of the club, Thai businessman Dejphon Chansiriis gone, and bidders are lining up to take over the project. A mystery donor has given the club a £1 million loan to get back on its feet. The EFL has allowed some free signings and former Leeds United captain Liam Cooper has joined Henrik Pedersen’s side.
Owls fans have returned to their tired old sanctuary wanting to feel something again.
“We should have been one of the first teams to celebrate the administration,” says Tom Scott of the Sheffield Wednesday Supporters’ Trust. “The last six or seven years have been pretty disappointing. That.” [Chansiri] We were regularly embarrassed by strange statements and strange decisions – losing Darren Moore was a good example… dragging yourself to the ground and sitting through protests and a bad atmosphere and poor performance became a reasonable thing to do. It became quite heavy.”
The negativity from both sides will come into play in Sunday’s derby match when Sheffield United visit Hillsborough. Two grand old clubs in a spirited sporting city are languishing in the relegation zone of the Championship, and they resemble some worthless prize fighters well past their best. “I think it’s going to be a pretty bad game of football,” Scott says with a laugh.
Yet Hillsborough will be bouncing. 33,000 fans are expected to turn up on a cold afternoon with nothing at stake but local pride, and the game is being shown live on ITV. hi ho sheffield wednesday will echo around the ground before kick-off. And that’s exactly what the next owner is buying – not flashy assets or gleaming stadiums or high-priced players, but a 150-year-old cultural institution that matters to its people.
Chansiri did not see the club that way. When I talked to fans a couple of years ago it seemed like maybe he deserved a little credit, because he’s spent a lot of his money, and has learned to stop making wild public statements, like his non-critical interviews. sheffield star A few years earlier he had asked supporters to raise £2 million themselves to pay off his debts and wages or risk losing the club.
By the end he completely disappeared from the public eye. While fans worried about whether their club would survive, Chanasiri went into hiding and was last heard from in a statement on the club’s website in July. Independent Attempts to contact him for this article did not elicit any response.
He was still in contact with club staff in his final days, but he was at the end of his rope. They faced delinquency or delays in payments in five out of seven months, and many employees had to postpone mortgage payments. As one staff member told me, it felt as if the club had already been in administration in the months before Chansiri’s departure and the situation could no longer go on.
What do supporters think of Chansiri’s reign now? Scott says, “It was a complete waste of time – his time, his money, and our time and money too.” “By the end it was getting a bit silly, nothing positive was happening.
“I think there was still a lot of goodwill towards him for that initial expense a few years ago. People could see that he had tried and he talked a good game. But certainly after [2023]It all unraveled massively and it became clear that he really didn’t know what he was doing, or didn’t particularly care about what he was doing.
Wednesday fans can take plenty of credit for forcing him to sit out, stay away from games and strangle him of his money by not buying merchandise. And he can take full credit for lifting the club from its knees, as he promised he would. Administrators issued a call to arms and fans bought club memberships in large numbers to fill the coffers. Supporters raised £10,000 in an hour to pay for the team’s hotel for their trip to Blackburn in December. The Trust raised a further £70,000 in just two days. In the month since administration, millions of pounds have been pumped back into the club.
The broken relationship between the club and the supporters is slowly being repaired. “We’ve designed a badge which has the Trust logo and next to it it says, ‘Paid for by the fans, for the club’,” says Scott. “The club are putting it on the players’ shorts. This wouldn’t have happened a few weeks ago [under Chansiri’s rule],
Most football fans don’t demand much. Certainly, Wednesday fans don’t have high expectations from European football every week; There are no delusions of grandeur at Hillsborough. They want reasonably priced tickets and a good pint and a caring team. They would like a well-run club where the people in charge listen to the fans again and again. But perhaps all any football fan really wants is a little hope.
“At least now it’s definitely our turn Some? “Nice to come,” Scott says. It seemed like every club around us had at least good ownership and a time of constant entertainment on the pitch. “After 25 years out of the top flight, maybe it’s our turn to have some fun.”