How Chris Turner and Peter Eustace changed the course of Sheffield Wednesday history with just £230k

He went to Middlesbrough and Nottingham, Glasgow and Bristol. Southampton, Cardiff, Sunderland. And north of the border; Glasgow, Livingston, Dunfermline, Aberdeen.

It was early 2004 and Turner, then manager of his beloved Sheffield Wednesday, occasionally went along with him. A memorable trip to Manchester to watch Kevin Keegan’s City reserve side saw them unearth a gem in Glenn Whelan, while wasted journeys elsewhere faded into one. Hotels and rainy motorways became the norm.

For months and months ahead of the 2004/05 campaign, while balls were still being kicked into a disappointing 16th-place finish the season before, the pair, along with Turner’s assistant manager Colin West, sat over tables and plotted their business.

Eustace was the club’s chief scout, a former manager, player and assistant woven into the very fabric of the club’s history. Turner and West had both played for the club. They knew what sort of player was required to turn their club around. Personality, they said, was every bit as important as potential.

But money was tight and they had to do it on a budget.

“I was told I had to run the club on a budget of £2.5m and we were at the time running at about £4.5m,” Turner told The Star, describing the job at hand throughout his time as Wednesday manager as ‘hugely difficult’.

“Some players that were released I would have liked to have kept, but it's one of those things, I couldn't see much mileage in having players around who had been on £5,000 per week contracts that had been dropped to £2,000 or £3,000. They’d have been difficult to motivate. That's why I released so many.”

Out went Leigh Bromby, Derek Geary, Steve Haslam and Alan Quinn. Kevin Pressman’s 17-year association with the club was over, John Beswetherick’s less successful stay gone too. A raft of youth players left and Sheffield Wednesday were starting again on a shoestring.

“We sent Peter up to Scotland to look at JP McGovern, Steve MacLean, people like that,” Turner said, the energy in his voice increasing as he delved deeper into the memory of a whirlwind few months.

“We had someone watching Boro's youth side and they said to me, 'Chris, get this lad signed fast'. So we got Chris Brunt on loan and signed him within the first week.

“I spoke to Kevin Blackwell intensely about McGovern, he'd been at Sheffield United and Leeds on loan and hadn't really put a marker down. But we had no width in the team at the time and we envisaged him playing and putting crosses in for Lee Peacock and MacLean. Some of them were risks, but it came together.”

Turner spoke to former managers of Paul Heckingbottom, an experienced, lively left-back. He picked up David Lucas permanently, a goalkeeper with a personality big enough to step into Pressman’s shoes and Chris Marsden, an experienced former Premier League midfielder whose injuries cut his stint at S6 short.

The whole lot cost just £230,000.

“You pick up the phone and you speak to people that have either managed or coached them,” Turner said. “You look at their careers and look at what they've achieved, where they've been. They had to be able to handle Hillsborough.”

One man that continues to do so, of course, is Lee Bullen. Picked up on a free from Dunfermline, the idea of a 33-year-old right-back arriving to save Wednesday filled few with confidence.

But he ended up lifting the League One playoff trophy and leading the club into the Championship, albeit under Paul Sturrock after Turner was sacked just nine matches into the season.

Bullen remembers: “Wednesday had gone through a rough time and were stuck in League One, so Chris made a huge, bold decision and rolled the dice, bringing in a whole boatload of players.

“Scotland at that time was going through some harder times money-wise and it was a good pond to be fishing in. I was at Dunfermline in the Scottish Premier League where the top wage was £2,500, so the average wage was about £1,000.

“For a club like Wednesday to come up to Scotland was brave, they signed myself, MacLean, McGovern. Then from elsewhere there were youngsters; Brunt, Collins, Whelan. It was a tough decision for Chris because he had to let go of some good players as well. But it worked.”

It did work. For Sturrock. By mid-September Wednesday were 14th and under huge pressure from supporters, chairman Dave Allen sacked Turner. A charge up the table followed and the Owls were promoted through the playoffs thanks to a famous 4-2 win over Hartlepool, Turner’s previous club.

On holiday in New York, Turner didn’t watch the game and was told the result by an excited supporter in Times Square. Seven of the 11 players that started for Wednesday were Eustace / Turner signings, as well as three of the four goalscorers.

The former Owls keeper looks back not with anger, but pride.

“I'd built both teams in that final, a large majority of the Hartlepool team were my players and obviously Sheffield Wednesday's team that year I'd put together,” he said.

“You feel frustrated that we'd worked for 18 months, I'd finally got a squad of players that I'd recruited and it was all over. But that's what chairmen and owners have got to make decisions about. There was a lot of pressure around at that time.

“Straight after the playoff final, Paul took the time to appreciate the work I'd done in collecting the players he had to work with, which I appreciated greatly.”

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