Simon Wilson details stance on Henrik Pedersen's Sheffield Wednesday future after 'exciting' chat
New Sheffield Wednesday sporting director Simon Wilson appears to have made his first big decision.
Henrik Pedersen received a strong message of backing from new Sheffield Wednesday football chief Simon Wilson after the pair shared an ‘exciting’ conversation about the club’s direction heading into next season.
The Danish coach took on a crisis-stricken club and saw key players leave in January as the Owls battled a host of unwanted records throughout a desperately difficult campaign that saw them record the earliest-ever EFL relegation and its lowest points total. A stream of football figures have praised Pedersen’s approach to holding the club together and retaining a regular competitiveness in spite of bitter circumstances.
The Star reported at the start of April that Pedersen was set to take the club on into the summer and next season should Arise take on the ownership of the club. With that new ownership six weeks in and with sporting director Simon Wilson confirmed as the man to lead the football operation heading into its new era, it has been made clear that stance hasn’t altered.
In a question and answer session carried out at an evening designed to showcase the club’s new hospitality offerings on Monday evening, Wilson was asked from the floor whether Pedersen was the right man to take the club forward.
“Yeah, I do,” he said firmly. “I think the challenge last season was incredible for the coaching staff. I know there weren’t many wins and I know there were challenges in terms of scoring goals and attacking play. But this was largely due to the circumstances.
“I think what you look at in those situations is; how did he or they lead in that moment? They were able to create wins without winning, they weren’t able to win on the pitch but they were able to win in another way by keeping and bringing people together.
“Some of the people here will have faced these challenges in their own businesses. When times are hard, how do you keep people together in that moment? How do you keep people buying-in for the greater good and not just for themselves? Henrik and the guys did an incredible job with this.”
The focus shifts to what will have to be a busy summer transfer window and the rebuilding of a squad decimated by the club’s financial chaos over the last two windows. Wilson spoke about the football conversations he has had with Pedersen - and the bold, attacking ethos the pair want to build together heading into what will be a refresh campaign in League One.
He said: “My first conversation when I met Henrik was firstly congratulations for that (holding things together last season), but it was then how are we going to play? How do you want to play? He just really excited me with the way he spoke about how he wants to build a team, what he wants to do when we’re playing at Hillsborough, how he wants to go and attack games and how he wants to score every time we have the ball. He wants us to be a very attacking team.
“My job is to give him the tools to go out and play exactly the way he wants to play. We’ve got there a top quality person and you can’t go too for wrong with that in life. It’s about giving him the tools to go and execute the way he wants to do it.”