Season autopsies and certain uncertainties - Danny Röhl, Sheffield Wednesday and midtable success
Sheffield Wednesday’s 2024/25 campaign is over and delivered the club’s sixth top-half Championship finish this century. Alex Miller reflects on a mad but ultimately successful campaign, with reflections from manager Danny Röhl.
Danny Röhl settled into his seat in the plush Vicarage Road media room and spoke with a sense of relief. Hours from a return to his young family, the exhaustion of a long and winding season behind him, he smiled through much of a 16-minute conversation.
It hadn’t always been thus. On-field struggles in the second half of a midtable finish, off-field wrangles and a failed mid-season approach from his former employers at Southampton all seemed to contribute to a mixed bag of Röhl post-match moods. At Watford he was as relaxed as those who have followed his side around could remember.
There were times he welcomed chat over whether Wednesday could be pushing for more and times he tried to avoid it. For weeks he pushed the topic of play-off capability himself, seemingly encouraging those around him look up the table rather then down. In the wider context of his ongoing situation at the club, there was of course perhaps more to his state of calm on Saturday then the stress-free success of a finish in the top half of the Championship. In his mind, perhaps, a feeling of finality.
But what does he take as his biggest markers for achievement?
“It’s a big question for sure,” he said. “But we finished fifth in the away table which is a big, big achievement. I don’t know how many games we lost away but this is not so much and we were always difficult to play against.
“There are a lot of individual examples and I said this in the changing room, for example Gabe. Everybody has their stories; Jamal, his late goal at Derby, all these little things. I must say, especially in the second half of the season, even if we didn’t win so many games, we showed more and more that we can play our game. We did not have to look to much to our opponent and we did this.
“We can look at the points total. We said 69 points might be enough this season and you can always look and find these points, but five or six other teams can do the same. If we finish in position 12th, then we deserve this. This is fair. For me there is more in the development and I took over 560 days ago, bottom of the table, no wins, less ball possession, less chances to score. Now you see a team that is competitive and that makes me proud.”
The progression and improvements are undeniable. Regrets? Röhl has a few. But then again, it seems, too few to mention. Spiralling form in the second half of the campaign had them in the depths of the form table and that home record underpinned it; eight without a win at Hillsborough from new year to mid-April and five defeats on the spin was their worst since 2009.
Anyone wishing to launch an investigation into why the underdog play-off flirtation didn’t take off would probably start with home fortunes at S6 and then make your way upstairs into meeting rooms and phone calls - or the lack of them. Flailing fortunes following the January transfer window were no coincidence and the public back-and-forth between manager and chairman put a previously burgeoning campaign into a different context altogether.
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The mutual post-Southampton communication stand-off delayed any transfer movement - only players that were going to markedly improve the line-up would be considered by Röhl and many sought-after individuals were frankly too expensive or by then had deals near-sorted - and the unsettling nature of the wrangle is understood to have been felt in the changing room. From the joyous, up-and-up momentum of life since his appointment, it all just got a wee bit messy.
But alongside all that, the fact remains that there was very little luck afforded to Wednesday after Christmas. Light at the back, Di’Shon Bernard was forced out of the rest of the season within days of that transfer window closure. Other issues cropped up for key men throughout the rest of the campaign; through form or injury or fatigue. For a few days, players trained and played having not been paid. Key moments within games went against them and the fact is that even their record at home failed on such painfully small margins - only three of the 17 games they failed to win at home were lost by more than a single goal.
Strip it all away, the ‘Wednesday chaos’ of it all, the sense of ‘Oh what might have been’, and there seems little doubt a 12th-place finish is something to be proud of - and there is absolutely no doubting the magic and graft Röhl has sprinkled on Wednesday to take them from Xisco’s rock bottom feeders to comfortable, at times stylish Championship competitors.
“In some positions we couldn’t find a clear starting one (player),” Röhl said in reflective mood. “This is part of the story, we had to change in some positions too often because of injuries and in the final weeks I was able to not change too much so we found a little bit of rhythm. You have some players, like Stuey (Armstrong), he is an outstanding player who can make things for the teammates around him, but he missed pre-season, he misses the rhythm.
“If you want more and you want to go up, for Sheffield Wednesday, you need a perfect season. Less injuries, more game moments, a little bit of luck. All these things you can achieve. We fully deserved the position 12. We were never in trouble with the relegation fight, it was always more about looking up and we spoke a lot of times about the cup being more half-full than empty. This is a great achievement for this club, I am not sure when this club was for the last time 12th in the Championship.
“I am proud of what we have done with the players and also to see the fans at home or away, these are the heartbeat of the club. You see this and it makes me proud how they celebrated and recognised what we did so far.”
‘So far.’ It is with those words on which Wednesday’s summer hangs. Röhl’s future is complicated and will be explored in more detail in the coming days and weeks, no doubt. An outburst at Stoke City not long ago had the German coach question the club’s ability to compete at the same level next season and with so many unknowns ahead, it’s difficult to decry that opinion with any confidence.
For now, looking back, Sheffield Wednesday’s 2024/25 season is over; and through the eyes of this reporter it should be read as a success. The problem is, of course, what comes next. The only certainty is uncertainty.