How it all works and a swear word: A morning with Sheffield Wednesday owner Dejphon Chansiri

You’ve got to admire him for fronting up.
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Full disclosure; The Star approached Sheffield Wednesday for an interview with owner Dejphon Chansiri earlier this week, as I suspect other organisations did, expecting to get short shrift.

We’ve had requests for interviews turned down before, as is Mr Chansiri’s prerogative. You tend to get a polite email back and for now at least, that tends to be that.

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After all, he spoke to us only a couple of months ago a short while before the sacking of Garry Monk and then again, albeit briefly, at the unveiling of Tony Pulis a couple of weeks later. It could fairly have been seen that he had ‘done his bit’ for the next few weeks. He could hardly have been accused of going to ground.

So to it then, the time difference between the UK and Thailand presumably a reason behind the kick-off time of an 8:30am press call that lasted over two hours.

How these things work in the current climate is that assembled reporters are welcomed into a Zoom holding room, make small talk about the weather and the previous evening’s scorelines and slurp from cups of tea while we wait for whoever is at the centre of the press conference.

A running order is circulated on who asks questions when; broadcast outlets always first, usually but not always ordered; national telly, national radio, Radio Sheffield, The Star, Yorkshire Live, The Yorkshire Post and The Athletic.

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It’s quite often the nationals aren’t about for week-to-week stuff. For Mr Chansiri and the fireworks that follow, they always are.

Sheffield Wednesday owner Dejphon Chansiri spoke to the media today.Sheffield Wednesday owner Dejphon Chansiri spoke to the media today.
Sheffield Wednesday owner Dejphon Chansiri spoke to the media today.

As soon as it was made public that we were to be granted an audience with Mr Chansiri the inevitable questions come rolling down the social media hill; Are all questions vetted beforehand? Are you given a list of things you aren’t allowed to ask?

The answer to both is emphatically, no. All we’re asked to do, in the interest of time and organisation, is to do our best to keep our allotted time slots to within 10 minutes. Tricky when you’re on a roll, a little wary that whoever goes next is cursing you for hogging the time. And again, full disclosure, The Star broke the banks by several minutes.

But on both occasions with Mr Chansiri in the last couple of months he has been perfectly happy to run over time-wise. Thursday’s effort did so by nearly an hour, the previous one by much, much longer.

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He is keen to answer questions and where folk might not appreciate the answers and while despite best efforts they are not always crystal clear, he does so openly and in as much detail as he can.

Not that there were any questions in the first half-hour of the engagement. One mention of Tony Pulis and he was off like a rocket, delivering a one-man take down the like of which The Star has not seen from a chairman towards a manager before.

One attendee even let out a semi-involuntary swearword not knowing they were unmuted, if there has ever been a more 2020 thing to happen.

It will be fascinating to hear Pulis’ reply, which though local media including ourselves are trying for, will most probably come through one of his longer-held acquaintances in the national press.

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Asked to press the Thai businessman on the player wage issue, season ticket refunds, FFP and the future running of the club, we did. We asked again and again. Some answers were more satisfactory than others.

What does come across is that there is a very genuine affection from Chansiri towards the club. Answering questions over how much it would cost supporters to take him up on his offer to ‘buy him out’, he was ruffled and said he had not thought about it. He claimed other clubs would love to take him on as owner but that his heart was at Hillsborough. And you can feel that in what he says.

Asked by The Star whether he could guarantee the club would not be in breach of FFP again, he said he could not, suggesting it was difficult to balance both financial rules and the ambition of supporters. To get to the promised land you had to risk breaching the rules, he intimated. Other clubs have of course been promoted on far more modest terms. It was a little bizarre.

After discussing Garry Monk and suggesting his former manager should shoulder more blame for how things went under his tenure, he himself bristled as suggestions he should take the blame for what was phrased by a national journalist as ‘the bad reputation’ of Sheffield Wednesday. As he said the last time we spoke, it’s his name above the door.

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There was more, lots more. Accounts will be handed over soon, he said. Advisors remain.

Football, too. The search for a new manager is going well and there will be support in the January transfer window. Aden Flint is off back to Cardiff. The pursuit of Sam Hutchinson remains a possibility.

It is impossible not to have deep sympathy for the position he and all football clubs find themselves in at current, the cash flow issues and pressures that come with it. It must be a nightmare.

But one thing he must surely stop doing, to heal the division that exists between boardroom and terraces, is describing supporters that criticise him – a minority though he describes them to be – as a central cause of problems. He talks about them a lot.

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Because while the the finances remain a troubling mystery, while the mistakes are made and the results are of major concern, that vocal minority he describes is getting louder. Sometime in the not-so-distant future, those fans will not only be firing on Twitter, but in the flesh in the seats that spell out his name. It’s a battle nobody wants.

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