Patience and lessons learned have Sheffield Wednesday in position to build a legacy - Alan Biggs

No set of fans is more entitled to have been impatient than those of Sheffield Wednesday. But perhaps there’s a message to the wider football public, and not just of the Owls persuasion, in the way the good ship is being turned around.

Patience won a vital victory when it came to the online debate around Darren Moore that raged into mid-winter.

While results have been chiefly behind a startling turnaround in public opinion, I sense the majority of supporters - the often silent ones - were ready to extend faith in the Owls boss, providing his team were in the promotion hunt.

Leading the table underlines for me that football should not listen to the clamour, the loudest noises, as much as it does. While management has always been precarious, the increased jeopardy of it is a modern phenomenon.

Let’s look at the Owls. Two of the most successful, and high profile, managers in living memory might not have got past first base had social media existed in their day.

Jack Charlton took nearly three years to get Wednesday promoted from the third tier (the same level as now) before finally succeeding in 1979-80 - after finishing 14th in the previous one. Would the Twitterati of 2023 have stood for that?

Moving on a decade, Ron Atkinson was relegated from the top flight in his first full Hillsborough season.

Would Big Ron have survived that today? Also to the point, would all the best players have stayed to put it right, as they did in 1991?

Both Charlton and Atkinson left great legacies, teams that were kicked on by Howard Wilkinson and Trevor Francis respectively. It wasn’t just about the promotions but the platform for further progress.

This has to be the aim now with Moore, who had similarly anguished beginnings. Because what happened immediately before his arrival was a series of knee-jerks that on reflection had no chance of working.

From Carlos Carvalhal (prematurely and harshly dismissed in hindsight) to Jos Luhukay, Steve Bruce, Garry Monk and Tony Pulis. Five managers in just over three years with the trusty Lee Bullen bridging in caretaker spells (unlucky not to get a longer run and enjoying life with Ayr United in Scotland).

Background noise contributed to five of them leaving – Bruce’s departure was obviously completely different. I still feel Monk would have kept the Owls in the Championship, although only Carvalhal and Bullen can count themselves truly unfortunate in my view.

Finding the right one demands some staying power and owner Dejphon Chansiri, in tandem with many supporters refusing to turn on Moore, has hit upon that.

So there are lessons all round in what’s got Wednesday to this point and they apply well beyond S6.