Alex Miller: With Sheffield Wednesday relegation looking more and more likely, what's the plan, Mr Chansiri?

Sometimes it’s not a step you want to take, it can be a painful step entirely against your will, but it’s one that years down the line you come back stronger from.

And as Sheffield Wednesday edged closer to the Championship trapdoor this week with back-to-back defeats to Luton and Rotherham, it may well be time to look for the glistening comfort of a teeny-tiny silver lining.

It takes a bit of a squint, but they are there, hiding away on the fringes of the big, dark cloud that is the club’s current malaise. Could the devastation of relegation, should it happen, be turned into a positive thing?

Folk are angry, not least the supporter screaming his lungs out outside Hillsborough’s South Stand throughout Darren Moore’s first post-match press conference as Owls boss.

They’re angry at how things have come to this, at how a series of managers have been unable to arrest a slide that started on a sunny day at Wembley over five years ago, at why this season’s managers were forced to deal with a points deduction for financial misconduct, at all sorts of things. Change is needed.

If Wednesday are to be relegated from the Championship this season then that anger will only increase of course and understandably so. On both occasions the club has been relegated from the Championship it has taken two seasons to return and there are absolutely no assurances it would take any less time should it happen again.

On the face of it, it’s more probable it would take longer. But let’s search for those reasons for optimism.

The Moore appointment has been fairly surmised by the vast majority of those watching on as an exciting one with huge possibility. It’s one Chansiri and the club should be praised for.

The 46-year-old has a proven track record of bringing on young players, of achieving everything a parent club could want from a youngster’s loan move to one of his sides. He is seen as a safe pair of hands, which rightly or wrongly, Wednesday haven’t been seen as in recent months. Moore’s name alone can attract players.

Done right, for those looking in from the outside, he can go a long way to changing the image of the football club.

If the club are relegated, it provides an opportunity to reset. Half the changing room is out of contract in the summer and a new one can be built on their new manager’s reputation, playing a ‘front foot’ style of football Moore says he demands from his sides.

The long-awaited shift to a ‘young, hungry, dynamic’ identity so hampered by the nature of the coronavirus crisis seems somehow more realistic in the third tier. Repairing a broken relationship with supporters? It’s easier to do while the team are winning a few games.

Though it does take some squinting to see, Sheffield Wednesday can bounce back from this season a better, stronger football club.

But all of this requires a joined-up approach from top down and, dare we suggest, a definite medium-term plan both on and off the field that has simply not existed in recent years.

Your move, Mr Chansiri.

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