Darren Moore found a fractured Sheffield Wednesday – now he’s putting the pieces back together

Fast-forward 18 months or so, and the mood is very different. Sheffield Wednesday are very different. And there’s one man who has to take particular credit for that.

Nobody is saying that they wanted the Owls to go down into League One, but it had become clear that a very large reset button needed to be hit at Hillsborough.

Darren Moore found a football club fractured, divided, and on the brink of a relegation that he couldn’t really do too much about. The fanbase was angry, some players felt uninterested, the disconnect between this once famous club and the supporters felt as disconnected as I can remember in my lifetime.

That wasn’t because of just one factor. It was Covid, it was the points deduction, the relegation, the unpaid wages – that day at Derby was just the grotty icing on a cake that nobody wanted.

Now he’s putting the pieces back together again.

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Moore, who had been in hospital and probably shouldn’t even have been pitchside that day, spoke almost immediately about moving forward.

“It is about focusing on what's ahead,” he told the media. “As we are back into it in the next six to seven weeks and we have got to be ready for it.”

He was true to his word.

The Owls boss didn’t waste much time in refreshing his squad. He made tough decisions, set out readdressing the balance of the Wednesday side, and built a squad that wasn’t too far off getting back up at the first time of asking.

And he did it smartly. He didn’t throw money at the problem and hope for the best. Getting George Byers and Lee Gregory for free despite them being under contract was a masterstroke, and his ability to keep finding centre backs to deal with the drastically unlucky injury issues in that position has been mightily impressive.

He’s a young manager still learning his trade, he’s going to make mistakes, but he’s also a thoroughly decent human being that has proven time and again that not only is he a genuinely good human being – but also a good football manager.

You don’t get to where Wednesday are now through luck.

His tactics have been questioned, his in-game management, his style of football – but in the last few weeks even his harshest critics have had to hold their hands up.

You felt it after the win over Wycombe Wanderers this weekend. It was exactly the sort of game that Wednesday didn’t win before – especially with the injuries – but they do now.

And you could feel it. At Adams Park the fans never stopped, from minute one to minute 97. It was one of the best Wednesday away ends that I’ve been witness to in ages.

There’s still a long way to go, and it will all mean nothing if Moore’s Owls don’t get the job done come May, but this football club feels different now.

Dejphon Chansiri has backed his man to the hilt, both in terms of players and his technical team, and everybody is reaping the rewards.

Wednesday conceded too many last season. This year after 26 games they’ve conceded fewer goals than anyone else in the league, are three clean sheets away from setting a new club record, and have only let in three goals from set pieces.

Wednesday weren’t strong enough away from home last season. This time around they’ve already won as many matches on the road (8) as they did in their entire 2021/22 campaign.

Wednesday hadn’t got the consistency needed to go up. Right now they’re on a 14-game unbeaten run in League One, and haven’t lost a football game over 90 minutes in over three months.

They couldn’t come back from behind, or hold on to leads. Neither of those are an issue anymore, they’ve done both of those things at least once in the last three weeks.

They couldn’t scrap it out for results. That’s not true anymore either.

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He can’t take all the credit for the way in which the Owls are moving right now, in terms of the great work being done off the pitch, but he’s at the heart of so much of it.

We’ve spoken to him at length about his views on the importance of community, of reconnecting this club with a fanbase that has seen their fair share of misery – and managers.

You just have to look at the videos of him talking to young fans, see the time that he spends signing autographs and taking pictures, watch the way he’s bought into so much of Wednesday’s culture. He just gets it.

Moore’s not far off his two-year anniversary at S6 now, and after just over 100 games in charge he’s got one of the highest win percentages in the club’s history.

If things carry on as they are, there will be more than just a clean sheet record getting broken this season.

Granted, Wednesday had to step down a division in order to do all these things, but in so many ways that’s exactly what was needed.

Darren Moore and Sheffield Wednesday have achieved nothing on the pitch just yet – promotion is the one and only goal. But Wednesdayites have got a club, and a squad, that they can be proud of again – and, for now at least, that’ll do just fine.