David Downes? Amadeu Paixao? Piecing together how transfers work at Sheffield Wednesday..

There’s nothing quite like the first signing of the January window to get transfer chatter restarted around Sheffield Wednesday.
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After Andre Green was announced as an Owls player this week, it prompted obvious and long-held questions over how transfers work at the club; with no permanent manager at the helm, how can it be that a player has been signed? Who makes these decisions?

Here’s a whistle-stop look at how it works at the club, as well as the main players involved.

Who are the key men?

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Dejphon Chansiri: The chairman and owner of Sheffield Wednesday, Chansiri has always maintained his desire to ‘support’ the club with new signings financially and has set up the process beneath him.

The recruitment team: Brought in by Steve Bruce in the summer of 2019, David Downes is the club’s Head of Recruitment, while Dean Hughes is their recruitment analyst. Bruce brought them in from his former club Aston Villa. They have a network of scouts working under their remit, headed up by Ken Ryder.

The manager: Post vacant. Whoever the new man is will work alongside those above in identifying what the team needs and what profile of player they desire.

Advisors: Chansiri has a handful of advisors, some more public-facing than others, that assist the club with a range of matters including, crucially, transfer dealings.

Sheffield Wednesday chairman Dejphon Chansiri, right, and his advisor Amadeu Paixao.Sheffield Wednesday chairman Dejphon Chansiri, right, and his advisor Amadeu Paixao.
Sheffield Wednesday chairman Dejphon Chansiri, right, and his advisor Amadeu Paixao.

In a nutshell, how does it work?

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The most succinct explanation of how incoming transfers work at Hillsborough was perhaps offered by former Wednesday boss Garry Monk around this time last year.

Quizzed on the club’s transfer process after the addition of loanee Alessio Da Cruz, Monk suggested there was nothing extraordinary about the way Wednesday did things and that transfers were made with the ratification of three pillars; the Downes-led recruitment team, the manager and finally and most importantly, the club itself.

“You have the recruitment department, you have the owner and you have myself on the football side of it,” he said.

“That’s who’s involved in that process. My side is to give my view on the football side of it and where I feel the squad’s at and what could help it, ins and outs and that type of thing.

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“You have the recruitment department who are obviously out there assessing players, watching and analysing for those specific needs or specific areas and then you have the owner and the club, that side of it, the financial side of it, who take care of that side of it.

“That’s how it works, that’s how, generally, it works at every club.”

Asked who has the final say, Monk said it was ‘an accumulation of the three’ and made clear he felt that no player would be signed at Wednesday if a manager didn’t want them.

Speaking late on in his 45-day reign at S6, Monk’s successor Tony Pulis hinted at the role of the manager in transfer dealings, reaffirming the suggestion the manager is central to the process.

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“I’ve sat down with Downesy (David Downes) and the recruitment people and gone through what I think we would need,” Pulis said. “And that’s with players leaving as well.

“My big responsibility is to convince the powers that be that this is the situation, this is what we need to give us as good a chance as we possibly can.

“I have that on my shoulders, I have a responsibility to the chairman, the staff, the players and the supporters.”

So how can Green have been signed without a manager’s say-so?

A 22-year-old free agent with recent England youth caps and a wealth of Championship experience? Wednesday appear to have done very well in snapping Green up.

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The club are light in his position, out wide, and the profile of the youngster fits what Wednesday have done with recent deals.

It’s not a deal that will have broken the bank and in fairness looks a good fit for all involved. Had they waited for the double-tick of a new manager, Green could have ended up as one that got away.

What is the role of Amadeu Paixao? What about Erik Alonso?

Chansiri has played down the role of his advisors in some of his more recent interviews, with controversial figure Amadeu Paixao and latterly Erik Alonso understood to be those closest to him.

Both are understood to have been chosen by Chansiri due to their connections in football and are said to be there primarily to get deals done rather than get involved in day-to-day talent identification, which since their arrival at the club has been the remit of Downes, Hughes and team.

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That said, Chansiri said that Paixao, a former agent with Doyen Sports, ‘recommended’ the likes of Fernando Forestieri, Barry Bannan, Lucas Joao and Dominic Iorfa to the club and was particularly influential in the Forestieri deal.

Asked directly on the role of Paixao last year, the Owls chairman told Yorkshire Live: “Does he make any decisions at the club? No. He is a cog in a very large wheel. Does he have the final say on anything? Of course not.”

On Alonso, Chansiri told The Star last month: “He has worked with me for a while now. He started helping me with regards to selling players, and with commercial things. He’s just one of the advisors, nothing special.

“He’s one of my advisors, as well as Amadeu.”

What about the rest of this window?

It seems Wednesday’s priority is getting the right manager in for now, but time is ticking on the transfer window.

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The summer of 2019 saw several big-name players; Julian Börner, Moses Odubajo, Massimo Luongo, Kadeem Harris, brought in on permanent deals while Lee Bullen was in temporary charge of the club. David Bates and Jacob Murphy arrived on loan, while deals were also done for Manuel Hidalgo and Paul Jones.

It could be that the club make similar moves if a manager is not in situ by the end of the month.

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