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<\/p>\nDejphon Chansiri, the outspoken owner of Sheffield Wednesday<\/p>\n
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Five months is a long time in football. At the end of May, Sheffield Wednesday were celebrating one of their greatest days when Josh Windass\u2019s late, late header finally broke Barnsley in the League One play-off final at Wembley. It was the most dramatic end to the most awful slog of a game, and Windass just about mustered the energy to run to the corner and slide on the grass, to be enveloped in blue and white shirts.<\/p>\n
Then, three weeks before the start of the Championship season, Wednesday were stunned when popular manager Darren Moore walked away citing irreconcilable differences with the outspoken owner, Thai businessman Dejphon Chansiri, a man who doesn\u2019t tend to reconcile differences. The summer\u2019s optimism washed away. Moore\u2019s replacement, Xisco Munoz, failed to win a single game in his first 12 and was sacked last month.<\/p>\n
While the club was bottom of the Championship, digesting their worst ever start to a league season, disgruntled fans protested against Chansiri\u2019s ownership. Their frustration over Moore\u2019s sudden departure and Xisco\u2019s disastrous appointment had stirred long-term concerns about financial mismanagement, managerial churn, scattergun recruitment and a lack of obvious strategy.<\/p>\n
Chansiri was furious and issued a statement vowing not to invest any more of his money in the club. He defended high ticket prices, hit out at misbehaving fans for accruing club fines, complained he was being treated unfairly and said the protests against him were \u201ca waste of time\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have no right to ask me to leave,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI am the one who saved the club and spent the money for the club, I am the one who needs to pay around \u00a32m on average every month [to keep the club afloat]. Some fans need to have more respect for owners of clubs and not be so selfish.\u201d<\/p>\n
But worse \u2013 and more bizarre \u2013 was to come when, last week, Wednesday were placed under a player registration embargo, owing to an unpaid tax bill. Chansiri, in his wisdom, threw down the gauntlet to supporters in a wild interview with the Sheffield Star<\/em>, telling them to rustle up \u00a32m themselves to cover the outstanding debt and player wages, or risk losing the club.<\/p>\n It was an extraordinary request \u2013 has an owner ever before demanded fans pay a club\u2019s bills?<\/p>\n The clock was ticking, with a potentially ruinous transfer ban stretching across three windows if the money wasn\u2019t found. Chansiri warned fans: \u201cIf you don\u2019t want to save your club, then don\u2019t call yourselves the owners and me the custodian.\u201d It is a line he has repeated many times down the years: the notion that supporters are the true owners of historic football clubs, and that he is just a steward, clearly irks him.<\/p>\n Sheffield Wednesday fans rejoice at Wembley during he League One playoff final<\/p>\n Chansiri, in fairness, has poured somewhere in the region of \u00a3150m into Sheffield Wednesday since he took over in 2015. He has been a little unlucky, perhaps, losing the Championship playoff final in 2016 with a place in the Premier League\u2019s promised land so close. His personal finances \u2013 Chansiri made his fortune in canned tuna \u2013 were badly damaged by the pandemic, and the club suffered too.<\/p>\n But his ownership has often been chaotic, summed up by his efforts to avoid breaching financial rules by buying Hillsborough stadium for \u00a361m in 2019. The controversial move didn\u2019t work, because an investigation found that money from the stadium\u2019s sale should not have been included in the club\u2019s accounts. Wednesday were hit by a six-point penalty the following season and were relegated to League One.<\/p>\n Fans have continually voiced concerns over how Wednesday are being managed. It is often the hallmark of a well-run club when they are able to sell good players for profit and keep improving, but according to transfermarkt, Wednesday haven\u2019t received a transfer fee in two years.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has felt like a lot of money spent badly with no real long-term plan,\u201d says Tom Scott of the Sheffield Wednesday Supporters\u2019 Trust, set up three years ago in response to the crisis which ended in a points deduction. \u201cI think that\u2019s where a lot of the frustrations get missed between the owner and the fans. We\u2019re not demanding money be spent, and ultimately the decisions are his to be made. It\u2019s just felt like the money\u2019s been badly spent.\u201d<\/p>\n There have been regular barbs directed at supporters along the way, and this latest outlandish statement calling on fans to pay the club\u2019s tax bill and player wages has been interpreted by some as an attack on fans\u2019 loyalty.<\/p>\n Yet this week the players were paid and the tax bill was cleared too. Given his interview with the Sheffield Star<\/em> was conducted only a couple of days earlier, Chansiri might have known that these payments would be met. Did he ever really need a bailout from fans? His threat to supporters smacked of an owner goading the fanbase and asserting his power \u2013 look how much you need me<\/em>.<\/p>\n On announcing that the debts were cleared, Chansiri denied playing \u201cgames\u201d with the fans. \u201cThis was a serious situation,\u201d he insisted. \u201cI said if 20,000 fans paid \u00a3100 each it would resolve the issue. I was making the situation totally clear if I did not have the available funds, but ultimately it did not come to that.\u201d<\/p>\n So crisis averted off the pitch, for now, although Chansiri has still not reversed his position on refusing to invest more money in the club, nor has he given reassurances over next month\u2019s payments.<\/p>\n On the pitch, there are some green shoots under new manager Danny Rohl, whose brand of fast football has already got pulses racing at Hillsborough. Wednesday showed bright signs in Rohl\u2019s first two games in charge, despite defeats, before they dismantled Rotherham last weekend to earn their first win of the season. Former Tottenham and England coach Chris Powell has joined as Rohl\u2019s assistant, something of a coup.<\/p>\n Danny Rohl has quickly put his stamp on the team<\/p>\n People inside the club say Chansiri is passionate about his football project and cares deeply about Sheffield Wednesday, even if they can\u2019t always explain exactly why he decided to buy them. But players and staff will be alarmed by recent developments, and it is hard to know where the already strained relationship between fans and owner goes from here. <\/p>\n Chansiri has said in the past that he would consider fair offers for the club, but none are thought to be forthcoming. And besides, he says a lot of things. <\/p>\n \u201cMy hope is that we can have some meaningful dialogue with the chairman,\u201d says Scott, \u201cbecause it\u2019s very hard to sit in the same room as him to talk about where the club can go from here.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem is that fans feel a bit like he\u2019s taking them for a ride. When it comes to the club that you follow, no matter what he says, you put a lot of money into it. Fans go to games, buy shirts, buy tickets, and in terms of a proportion to their own income, it\u2019s a heck of an investment. So to carry on this line that the fans don\u2019t support their club is something that we\u2019re either going to get past, or we\u2019re not. And if we don\u2019t get past it, I can\u2019t see where it goes.<\/p>\n \u201cI think these repeated attacks on the fans and their loyalty, it\u2019s only ever going to end up in one direction.\u201d<\/p>\n For now, though, Sheffield Wednesday and Dejphon Chansiri they are stuck with one another.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/static.independent.co.uk\/2023\/11\/02\/10\/GettyImages-1494292424.jpg\")
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