Time for Sheffield Wednesday to operate as a club of their stature and support should do

So here we are again with Sheffield Wednesday amid raptures over the outcome of a second successive cliffhanger. The important thing is not just winning promotion or escaping relegation. It’s what you do next. Do you exploit it or blow it?

Football is unforgiving when liberties are taken; second chances are rare. When the ball starts rolling in your favour, you kick it further forward and not back.

Owls’ owner Dejphon Chansiri is lucky to have this second chance. And I think it demands a radical change of approach rather than just money, which, without the former, can be scattered to the wind - as in the last decade.

It’s possible that nothing will ever top the euphoria of last season’s surreal promotion but this, just a year later, comes remarkably close. Imagine sticking a pin in this big bubble of joy. Well, we don’t have to imagine. It’s been tried once and it didn’t work out too well, did it?

Once is careless, to put it mildly. Twice would be little short of criminal. And so we wait. For either of two explosions - anger or relief. After the chaotic upheaval of last summer the outcome is impossible to predict. And it’s to do with that same characteristic Hillsborough unpredictability as much as anything.

Of course, you can’t divorce money (sufficient or lack of) from the argument - but fundamentally I reckon it’s about much more.

Things like general approach to running a club, having an executive day-to-day presence at the ground, transfer policy (trading players as well as signing), displaying a professional rather than amateurish front to the place. Besides, even if the owner had untold untapped riches, he couldn’t spend beyond a certain limit. There is a welcome sea change within the game towards running clubs sustainably above all else.

This calls for real football expertise in order to produce success on the field. And a definite plan, a real long term strategy. I’d suggest both these things have been lacking in the running of Sheffield Wednesday. And these are things the club must have in future, whoever owns it and whoever is manager. But Danny Rohl as head coach goes a long way down the track. Wednesday fail to keep him and keep pace with him at their peril. It’s an unmissable opportunity to heed a deafening message which, to judge Rohl’s comments, is now booming inside Hillsborough as well as outside it.

Wednesday simply have to present a more convincing face to the world, to operate as a club of their stature and support should do; not appear to be governed remotely on a whim.

The ground itself, and its environs, should be the powerhouse. With fully empowered people running the place. Rohl has seen the inside of Bayern Munich and Southampton, for instance. He knows what clubs of a certain size should look like and how they should operate. Only in such an environment can he be confident of his future.

So it’s not just about a new deal for the manager but, for me, a new way of working. That’s what I detect from Rohl’s public demeanour, for instance his clear discomfort during the last transfer window. Only one man can answer that need and it’s not all to do with his money or even lack of.

Chansiri has had nine years at it. He’s entitled to do it his way, but, despite his best intentions, his way has not worked.