Passion, principles and the next step: A day spent behind the scenes at Sheffield Wednesday
Genuine access behind the scenes at a football club is a rare thing indeed. Local media were welcomed to Middlewood Road this week to take in the benefit of exactly that. Alex Miller reports.
On the wall to the right of Henrik Pedersen sits a whiteboard loaded with scribbles. The notes are written in purple and look somehow simultaneously chaotic and fiercely organised, with session plans and the names of several Sheffield Wednesday players listed beneath it on a busy roadmap for the week. The player names denote whose scheduled for an individual planning meeting and five alone are taking place that day.
It’s Tuesday and training - for most - had come to an end a couple of hours earlier. The Dane is sat in a clean and tidy office, his back to the large glass doors that look out onto the primary pitch on the club’s Middlewood Road training ground. With three reporters and a press officer gathered, he excitedly explains some of his principles while scribbling on yet another whiteboard on his desk.
The experience is an intense flurry of information and enthusiasm that took a deeper dive into the Pedersen we see in public-facing press engagements. The positive, optimistic outlook he has presented in his first months as Wednesday manager is only more evident in his own environment and he takes a breath from a candid conversation only to reach for one of the cans of Coke Zero cooling in the minifridge beside him. He takes a passion in explaining things, his hands working overtime as if his subject matter requires a physical release for excitement.
We’d earlier been invited to watch training in which players were put through their paces on Middlewood Road’s ‘top pitch’. The mood is high and concentrated, with Pedersen and other coaches in the thick of it, barking instructions in high-vis vests. Players have been placed on highly-specific programmes as the club seeks to navigate a busy period and some senior figures spend the afternoon in the gym facility. Pierce Charles bounces about under the watchful eye of new goalkeeping coach Darryl Flahavan. He looks strong and we’re told his recovery is going well.
Young forwards Charlie McNeill and Bailey Cadamarteri stay on for finishing drills Pedersen later explains are at a first level of difficulty to be staged-up throughout the week. The pair look sharp. To the ‘lapsed athlete’ reporters watching close by, the drill looks quite difficult indeed and on the odd occasion balls are bounced out of range and into our vicinity, there’s a tense moment as we side-foot them to coaches nearby. A player ratings role-reversal would have made for shameful reading, you’d suspect.
A healthy lunch took in casual conversations with members of Pedersen’s new coaching staff, The Star enjoying a first chin-wag with the impressive Craig Mudd. A relaxed but focused and positive energy was palpable. We’re told with an earnest that it’s nothing new and that throughout the last weeks of madness, while there’s been a few down days, the overriding spirit is of getting the best out of whatever is thrown at them.
Into a seventh season covering the club, this is a level of access never before granted to The Star but is not one of the ‘charm-offensive’ initiatives brought about by the new club’s administrators. The invite was extended from the club’s communication department a couple of weeks before administration was confirmed, with Pedersen receptive to the idea in a way previous Owls managers had not been. Each to their own.
In a central room adjoined to Pedersen’s office, set up much like you’d expect an open-plan call centre or newsroom, reporters are encouraged to sit down and engage with faces old and new to get a better feel of the work they do. A first introduction to Pete Shuttleworth details his past experiences with a Derby County outfit in administration and touches on a level of detail in pressing tactics that left the head spinning. Analyst Richard Stirrup, now a decade into his formal employment with the club, offers a candid view on the way things are set up.
The chats are off-record and relaxed, a departure from our soundbite-inducing recording devices and nervousness that regular media engagements can deliver. They offer an honest view of how things run at Middlewood Road and the sense of collaborative, behind-the-scenes togetherness often spoken about but seldom seen first-hand.
And then to Pedersen’s office. Among the fascinating talking points is that delays in appointing his staff were centrally down to a rigorous selection process, with three main pillars central to the values he seeks. If you do not excel in at least one of them, you have no place in his team. Senior coaching colleagues report to the training ground at 7am, with offline planning discussions having taken place at nearly 11pm the night before. In difficult circumstances, this is a backroom team of drive and high standards.
The day closes politely, with Pedersen keen to jump into his next meeting. There’s no rest for a manager of Sheffield Wednesday. He wears it well.