Pride, anguish and why he left - Neil Thompson on Sheffield Wednesday
Last month Neil Thompson’s time with Sheffield Wednesday was officially confirmed to have come to an end after over 14 years as a central cog in its football machine. Alex Miller had the pleasure of speaking to him recently.
At some point in the last few weeks, Neil Thompson will have thrown his granddaughter up in the air and heard her giggle on the way back into his arms. He’s taken in cycling trips with pals and he’s got round to tackling DIY jobs around the house that in years gone by would have been left unfinished. He’s retired - just for the moment at least - and in a 25-minute phone call with The Star, he sounds relaxed and happy throughout.
The summer of 2025 was Thompson’s first in 45 that had not seen him report to a pre-season training programme. A playing career that saw him earn club icon status at Scarborough and Ipswich Town took in 590 league appearances and five promotions as a tough and uncompromising defender that played in each of the top five English leagues. He stepped into coaching five years before he hung up his boots and enjoyed player-management stints with York City, Scarborough and Boston United before joining Leeds United. And then, in 2011, came Wednesday.
He jokes with The Star that his decade-and-a-half in a Wednesday tracksuit has taken in pretty much every coaching role a football club can offer, from under-18s coach to first team assistant and caretaker manager. Had someone asked him to take on the goalkeepers, you rather suspect he’d have given it a crack. He’s played at least some part in every success story the club enjoyed in that time and rode it out through the leaner periods.
In a modern world where the phrase ‘proper football man’ is sometimes so unfairly ridiculed, Neil Thompson is certainly one. In a summer of dramatic upheaval at Wednesday, the departure of the 61-year-old was perhaps not the flashiest or most headline-grabbing but is one that will be felt as keenly as any other. But it’s one that came on his terms.
“It just felt like a good time,” he said, suggesting the decision may well have come sooner had the opportunity of working with Danny Röhl not piqued his curiosity nearly two years ago. “I'd been thinking about semi-retiring for a while if I'm honest and it's something that I came to a decision about during last season. I had let the gaffer know what I was thinking. It all came to a natural end.
“But it is sad. It becomes such a huge part of your life and it's addictive, football. It is difficult to put down but it is time to take a step back. It's demanding physically and on your time as well. With the family and everything, I felt it was time to give them more time.
“It's a brilliant job. Fantastic. And I've been so, so fortunate to have been involved in it for so long. I know so many people that either want to be involved in it or have been in and have fallen out of it and can't get back. I’m hugely grateful. But once you're into the season, that's you then for 10 months and your time with family is dependent on games, travel, programme. That's how it needs to be and it's about full commitment. Time’s time.”
From Megson to Röhl - and a quiet word from Moore
Darren Moore pulled Thompson to one side one day and spoke to him with an air of admiration. The eventual promotion-winning Owls manager had taken place in the Hillsborough hotseat after a Thompson caretaker spell that lasted longer than anyone - the man himself included - had expected it to.
It was a caretaker stint that had come at what was until recently Wednesday’s lowest time in modern seasons, locked in a soulless 2020/21 season of struggle played out in front of empty stadiums during the Covid-19 pandemic. Tony Pulis’ mini-reign had achieved a miserable one win in 10 matches and ended in a whirlwind of controversy and rants from above. Rocked by a points deduction, Thompson picked up a side rock-bottom and hapless.
They would eventually be relegated on the final day of course but would have been down much sooner had it not been for the results Thompson delivered in the first weeks of that temporary stint. Five wins in his first seven matches provided the only purple match of a sorry season and came as little surprise to the players at the time. He was, is and always has been a fiercely popular figure in various Wednesday changing rooms and after a Pulis turn many found to be stifling, Thompson allowed them to go out and play.
“Darren once said to me that I'd been in the game a long time and remarked on how I must have been able to change with it, being able to move with the times,” Thompson regaled with a sense of pride you could hear down the phone. “While there is always room for old-school values; hard work, dedication, there's always room for new ideas to come in and that certainly happened. I enjoyed the challenge of keeping up to speed with things, and I felt I did that. Things certainly changed along the way.”
He was first brought to Middlewood Road as a first team coach by Gary Megson in February 2011 alongside Chris Evans (not that one). To put things into context, in February 2011 it’s more than possible that recent Owls debutant Yisa Alao was still in nappies. Kate Middleton had yet to become a Royal and back then Donald Trump’s biggest judgement of the week was deciding whether Meat Loaf had shown more salesmanship than David Cassidy in flogging pizzas on The Apprentice.
Football was very different, too. And there’s no greater juxtaposition to illustrate the fact, perhaps, than the fact Thompson arrived under someone of Megson’s methods and ended under those of Röhl - both successful in their own right, of course.
Stints in one job title were rarely long and Thompson’s CV sees him jump back and forth from first team responsibility to roles in the academy time and again. He oversaw a Professional Development League title in 2016/17 that saw some of the club’s brightest young prospects graduate to senior debuts and contributed to some of the club’s finest first team achievements in its modern history.
“It kept me interested!” he laughed when asked whether the upheaval of different job roles was help or hindrance. “To do the same thing season after season could maybe get a bit tedious, so my job changing as much as it did was maybe a benefit; first team coach, head of coaching, under-18s, under-21s, first team coach, caretaker. At any football club you have to be flexible and adaptable. The game has changed so much since I started coaching; more detailed, more analysis, more coaches, it's definitely more tactical. You've got to work with it and be prepared to change.
“I look back on the time as caretaker and look, it was full-on and we needed results. We were struggling and we hadn't won for a while. Covid made things more difficult. Look, we couldn't sustain the results we wanted and it was just a job I had to do. I'd been manager before at other clubs so I wasn't worried about it, but I just wanted to step into the breach and give it everything I had. It was enjoyable, but hard work. It certainly gave me an insight into what's required.”
Not retired yet
One thing Thompson is keen to stress is that he is not retired just yet. Not fully, anyway. A summer playing the roles of grandad and Alpine cyclist is but a pause from a lifetime in football and though there’s little interest in returning to the game full-time, there’ll be a mulling-over of new opportunities in the coming weeks and months as he looks to stay in on a part-time basis.
He’s well-liked in the game and has picked up enough respect along the way for him to feel confident he’ll be able to pick something up a few days a week, in a part-time coaching capacity, perhaps as a loans manager, as a mentor of some sort or in scouting. In six years covering Sheffield Wednesday, this writer has never heard a bad word said about Neil Thompson. That’s not often the case.
It strikes throughout the conversation that with every question around one of his own successes, Thompson replies ever so naturally with a comment about the wider collective and of relationships he’s enjoyed within the game either as a peer or as someone who has had an influence on a younger man’s career. A flick through the archive of Star articles featuring words of praise for the 61-year-old returns glowing referrals from the likes of Barry Bannan and Callum Paterson to youngsters long since left S6. You suspect Thompson would take huge pride in that.
“One of the first texts I got (when his departure from Wednesday was confirmed) was from Alex Hunt,” Thompson said. “I had a lot of time for him, he has always been a lovely footballer. And it's great to see him making his way in the game and doing well. It was really lovely to get a text from him.
“I get on with a lot of the current squad and have done all the way through. In coaching it's different from being a manager, you have to distance yourself a bit more when you're in charge, but I always enjoyed the rapport with the players as a coach. You have to do it to get that response and develop a positive relationship. Maybe they would tell you different! But I'm honest with them and it's straight-forward; you put the work in, you get results.
“Football is a high-pressure environment and you need to have that humour and banter in a changing room. That’s something I’ll miss on a day-to-day basis I think. I've always seemed to develop relationships with players. You have arguments and disagreements, don’t get me wrong. The under-21s will tell you, I had to be tough with them, but you get on with it the next day and there's always a message there.”
Looking on from the outside
There’s a momentary sigh when Thompson is asked about his view on where Wednesday go from here. In a piece such as this, there’s no need to regale the monstrosities of the summer of discontent, but in hearing his tone down the phone there’s little struggle in sensing his anguish. It’s a tone shared by everyone with blue and white-tinted spectacles in recent months.
After a pause, the now former Owls stalwart offers a desire to see the club move to better health as quickly as possible and wishes everyone involved every success in doing so. As is his character, he finds a faintly positive glimmer in the mire the club has fallen into.
“Everyone out there looking in just wants it to get resolved as quickly as possible in terms of things becoming positive,” he said. “That club means a lot to a lot of people and it's not easy, but there will be opportunities. The young lads will get their go. We know it's a tough time and let's just hope they get to the end of that tunnel quickly.”
He looks back on his time at Wednesday with great pride and while he has enjoyed his summer off, accepts there will come a time in the not-too-distant future that there’ll come a pang of sadness. But, as he puts it, time’s time and he’s thankful for the memories and opportunities Sheffield Wednesday have provided.
A cursory glance at a few squad lists shows players he has worked with in every division from Premier League to deep into the semi-professional ranks. Hunt’s won’t have been the only message of thanks he received in recent weeks.
“There were brilliant times and obviously the support of the club is fantastic, the fans have always been terrific, the home fans are one thing and you go away from home and it's sold out every time,” he glowed. “Just incredible, honestly.
“I've done a lot of jobs at Wednesday and every one has been fulfilling. Some of them have been difficult at times but I worked with some fantastic people; managers, coaches, backroom staff, support staff round the training ground. It was a fantastic time and one day you get to 14 and a half years in and you think 'Wow, where's that gone?'
“Of course I'll miss it. You spend most of your life in changing rooms or coaching rooms and it becomes part of how you go about things. It's an environment I enjoy working in and I've done it for a lot of years. I do think I need to keep my hand in, whether that be coaching, looking after loan players, mentoring, scouting I don't know yet.
“But I'm sure I'll keep in touch with people. I worked with a lot of really good people and I have a lot of respect for them. I just hope they feel the same way towards me.”
There seems little doubting that.