Final word on Sheffield Wednesday's transfer window as Danny Röhl offers responsibility for slow start

Deadline day came and went on Monday as the proverbial swan, very little happening as far as appearances go, but with work going on beneath the surface. An important new contract for talented young defender Gabriel Otegbayo was the day’s only public Owls announcement, with free agent defender Ryo Hatsuse announced as a third addition of mid-season on Thursday. Stuart Armstrong and Ibrahim Cissoko bolstered midfield and attack.

Deadline day..

A few days on and further to previous coverage, The Star can reveal that work was done to bring in a Championship defender on a permanent transfer before the selling club backed out of the deal on deadline day - and that the loan signing of Nottingham Forest attacker Emmanuel Dennis was considered before it was decided he would likely not make an adequate impact in an already busy roster of attacking players given he had not played since April last year.

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Dennis later signed for Blackburn Rovers on loan - Rovers had backed off a deal to sign Cissoko earlier in the window - and the centre-half remains a potential consideration for the Owls heading into the summer transfer window. It’s understood that there was further late transfer activity involving the potential of Premier League loanees.

“It’s always hard,” Wednesday boss Röhl said on the last day of a window that also saw Shea Charles successfully re-signed on loan. “The first two signings were fantastic and then on deadline day you hope and you try, but then I must also say for some players I was not 100 per cent convinced. Maybe there was the chance to get them, but I said whether they were really an impact player who makes us better? Or are they just a body to bring in?

“For me I want to always be 100 per cent convinced to make a signing, then it makes sense. I know sometimes there are players that you see could be helpful, why didn’t we sign him or him? For me it was really important it was impact players.”

False starts..

It may well be that in years to come, when looking back on the stories coming from Sheffield Wednesday in January 2025, the signings of new players and the retention of another are not the first that come to mind.

The opening weeks were laced with barbed press conferences and then came a five-hour fan forum. There was claim and counter-claim on where the breakdown in communication between Röhl and Owls owner Dejphon Chansiri had come from. The recruitment team did their job in the background but what was clear was that a driving force behind Wednesday’s January recruitment mission was not there.

Speaking with the benefit of hindsight, Röhl had little energy to dwell on the whys and wherefores around Wednesday’s January false start, but in summing up did seek to hold his hands up for any role he did play in a slow early January. The feeling is that, perhaps, nobody was entirely blameless.

“It is my job as a manager,” he said. “I can take responsibility for the first 10 days if you want, this is part of my job. We look back and we say we can improve this. I am always critical of myself and this is always the first thing after a game - what I can do better. I will not look to what my players do - I look first to my part and the decisions, I decide whether the argument was right or not.

“Maybe - and this is a maybe because nobody knows - we could get a player or not. But if you want I can take the responsibility. If you want to blame me for this, for those 10 days, then I can do this.

“But at the end of the window I take the positive things. We got three new players, we kept Shea Charles and this is all very positive.”

Röhl’ing on

The past is the past and Röhl expressed a satisfaction with the improvement made to the Wednesday squad heading into this weekend’s clash at West Bromwich Albion - and with two points separating the Owls from the top six gave no backward step in hinting at what could be possible in the coming weeks.

He also makes no secret of the fact that his side do so from a position of relative underdogism - with the accumulative values of other squads in the same fight dwarfing that of Wednesday. With the transfer circus having packed up for another few months, there’s a feeling Röhl is seeking to harness a spirit of togetherness both inside and out.

“The squad is better,” Röhl said. “At first it was important to keep Shea. We didn’t lose a key player and we should not forget this - some teams lost players to other teams. Then we brought Stuey and Ibi in and this is helpful, now Ryo. All in all we improved our squad, we got some impact players and this is what I want to see from this transfer window instead of what we didn’t get. With this mindset we go now.

“What I learn from the transfer window as well is that some opportunities came very late, Ibi for example was not available at the beginning of the window and that took some time. Then there are some options you believe in at the beginning of the window and you see you have no chance. The January window is special, we try our best, we worked the last couple of days very closely. I think this is what I take from this window.”