Adam Clery Football Column. A newsletter that unpacks the absurdities and oddities of the beautiful gameThe ACFC newsletter: unpacking football’s absurditiesUnpack football’s oddities with the ACFC newsletterIt is fair to say things haven’t gone swimmingly since I last visited Hillsborough in the spring of 2023. Sheffield Wednesday were the top team in League One at the time, with a 22-game streak of unbeaten games under Darren Moore. This was the best performance of any team in the country. Promotion to the Championship was achieved that summer. Wednesday had three managers in a row, stopped paying staff and players, closed the crumbling North Stand, and went into administration. The club is now at the bottom of Championship with -4 and further deductions are likely. The club has a few senior players, and some youngsters who fill in. They are constantly injured by the stress of playing professional soccer twice a week. The stadium, which has barely been touched after its renovation before Euro 1996, is in a state of decay. The much-needed training complex is still a distant fantasy. But there’s excitement again on the terraces. The club’s despised owner, Thai tuna magnate Dejphon Chansiri, is gone, and bidders are lining up to take on the project. A mystery donor has lent the club £1m 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’s side.Owls fans have flocked back to their tired old sanctuary, wanting to feel something again.open image in galleryFans queue outside the ground the day after the club entered administration (Getty Images)open image in galleryYoung Sheffield Wednesday fans celebrate the departure of owner Dejphon Chansiri (Getty Images)“We must be one of the first teams ever to celebrate administration,” says Tom Scott of the Sheffield Wednesday Supporters’ Trust. “The last six or seven years have been pretty desperate. He [Chansiri] was embarrassing us quite regularly with strange statements and odd decisions – losing Darren Moore was a good example … 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.”Negativity would be understandable on both sides of Sunday’s derby match when Sheffield United visit Hillsborough. Two grand old clubs in a passionate sporting city are languishing in the Championship’s relegation zone, and they meet like a couple of haggard prize fighters well past their best. “I think it will be quite a poor game of football,” Scott laughs. Hillsborough is still going to bounce. Expected 33,000 fans are expected to turn out in the freezing cold on a day when local pride is on the line. “Hey ho Sheffield Wednesday” The reverberations will be felt around the stadium before kick-off. And this is really what the next owner is buying – not lucrative assets or a gleaming stadium or high-value players, but a 150-year-old cultural institution that matters to its people.open image in galleryWednesday manager Henrik Pedersen says he is determined to stabilise the club (Getty Images)open image in galleryFans have returned to fill Hillsborough in recent weeks (Getty Images)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 £2m themselves to cover debts and wages or risk losing the club.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’s website in July. The Independent attempted to contact him via his tuna business for this article but received no response. In the final days of the club, he was still in touch with the staff but they were on the brink. The club was in a state of administration for months before Chansiri left. 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’t go on any longer.open image in galleryDejphon Chansiri, the outspoken former owner of Sheffield Wednesday (Getty Images)open image in galleryFans protest against owner Chansiri in the days before his exit (Getty)How do supporters reflect on Chansiri’s reign now? “It was a total waste of time – his time, his money, and our time and money as well,” Scott. “By the end it had gotten a bit silly, there was just nothing positive happening. “A 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’d tried and he talked a good game. But certainly after [2023], it all massively unraveled and it became clear that he really didn’t know what he was doing, or particularly care about what he was doing.”The fans of Wednesday can be credited for his forced departure, as they deprived him of money by not attending games and buying merchandise. The fans can claim all the credit, for bringing the club out of its rut. Administrators called on fans to buy club memberships and fill the coffers. Supporters raised £10,000 in an hour to pay for the team’s hotel for December’s away trip to Blackburn. The Trust raised another £70,000 in only two days. Millions of pounds were poured into the club in the month following administration. “We designed a badge that has a Trust logo and then around the side it says, ‘Paid for by the fans, for the club’,” Scott adds. “The club are putting that on the shorts of the players. That wouldn’t have happened a few weeks ago [under Chansiri’s rule].”Most football fans don’t demand much. Wednesday fans are not expecting European football to be played every week. Hillsborough is not a place of delusions. They want reasonably priced tickets, a good pint, and a caring team. They’d like a well-run club where the people in charge listen to fans now and again. All a football lover really wants, however, is hope.“It’s surely our turn for at least some good to come,” Scott says. “Every 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’s our turn for some fun.”
2025-11-21 12:10:52
Administration, a crumbling ground and -4 points: Sheffield Wednesday fans have not felt this excited in years
