Message to EFL: Sheffield Wednesday's potential owners need supporting not dismantling
All Sheffield Wednesday fans really want is a proper, well run football club, acting responsibly and worth being proud to support.
And they could justifiably say the same about the people running the game generally. It’s not too much to ask, is it?
If the prospective new owners achieve the first part of that, as I’m inclined to believe they can, then this horrific period will have run its ruinous course.
Which should be with the assistance of, and not in spite of, the English Football League. Eighteen points docked already and, with widespread reluctant acceptance, another 15 in the pipeline (unless Dejphon Chansiri can be persuaded to do a deal on his debt).
Let that be an end of it. Weak EFL governance is ultimately responsible for a failure to stop Chansiri’s reign running on into ruin. To effectively threaten a drop to League Two, or even question the club’s League membership, through severe player signing restrictions, is way beyond proportional punishment.
The David Storch-Tom Costin rescue needs supporting, not dismantling. Hopefully the outcry generated by the Wednesday Supporters Trust in revealing the EFL’s previously hidden “discretionary” powers, allied to the onset of the Independent Football Regulator, will hold sway.
I believe the IFR has already helped the Owls indirectly. Surely fear of likely rejection by the incoming body prompted the withdrawal of the much distrusted James Bord bid?
Now the IFR has to show support in another direction, by backing Arise Capital Partners beyond regulatory approval which sources suggest is well advanced.
Success on the field? That, as everyone understands, is for way down the line. If anything good has come out of this nightmare, it’s been to strip back to the fundamentals of how a club should operate.
And that’s with fans - as the one redeeming and defining element of an unprecedented crisis - front and centre.
Storch and Costin clearly get that as an easy first win. Only a start but a good one.
It’ll be some time before Wednesday are ready for take-off under the aviation entrepreneur heading the takeover - but for the best of reasons.
The group have suggested they will, to use one analogy, direct part of their initial focus and money towards building a good runway first.
If not an entire terminal building eventually. And I think it’s the right way round. I mean, there’s also so much baggage to sort.
Low expectations initially - on the field, that is - can actually help in this case.