P&S, player sales and possible recalls - Your Sheffield Wednesday questions answered

There are three weeks left of January as clubs around the country flock to make new additions to their side, but things are a little bit different this time around with the Owls given Danny Röhl’s comments about a lack of clarity on what he can and can’t do this month.

It doesn’t mean that people at Wednesday aren’t working behind the scenes, though, and there has already been a bit of movement after Sean Fusire joined Carlisle United on loan - but here are some of your questions answered by our SWFC writers, Alex Miller and Joe Crann...

What sort of restrictions are Wednesday under – if any – when it comes to spending this month?

AM: It's a great question. As per our interview with football finance expert Kieran Maguire not long ago, the latest set of accounts suggest Wednesday are under no real threat of breaking PSR. They work slightly unusually in that each deal is brought to the chairman on a case-by-case basis rather than a budget as such.

JC: As Alex says, there’s nothing to suggest that there are any real concerns when it comes to breaking the rules - and obviously having the problems that follow that - but that doesn’t mean to suggest that there will be any sort of ‘spendageddon’ on the horizon. It feels like those days are gone at Wednesday.

Is there still a breakdown in communications between the manager and the chairman?

AM: To the best of our knowledge there hasn't been a breakthrough on that front, but without tapping the phone of either fella we can't say for sure! Danny's next press conference is expected on Thursday and I'm sure we'll find out more then - and we may well get the chairman's side of things next week at the fan forum. This is an important time for Wednesday and ultimately it's something they need to sort out for the good of the club.

JC: We were expecting this question, but only two people can really answer it... We’ll be speaking to one of them tomorrow (Thursday) and hearing from the other next week. The Owls historically haven’t been very fast movers in the January window so not doing anything yet isn’t out of the ordinary, but there’s no doubt that they need more bodies through the door. I have heard, however, that they’ve been a bit slow on the uptake on certain things - so that won’t help.

Do you think Wednesday could cope if players like Josh Windass, Shea Charles, James Beadle were to leave?

AM: Each one of them would be a monumental loss and you'd be hard-pressed to find like-for-like replacements. As things stand, I don't see Windass leaving as the Santos bid is a mile away from anything I think Wednesday would consider - the presence of a year's extension trigger in his contract takes the heat off any potential pressure to entertain interest. Speaking over the weekend, Danny suggested Beadle was more or less in the bag barring something unforeseen going down at Brighton. Charles is the only niggly concern - but if I were a betting man I'd have 50p on him staying put.

JC: Frankly, no. Finding quality like Charles and Beadle on loan isn’t easy, and even if you find the quality it’s no guarantee that they’ll fit in the same, and with Windass I don’t think there’s any chance that they’d be able to replace him with the money they might get for a player with a maximum of 18 months left on his contract. Thankfully, though, it doesn’t really feel like losing any of them is a concern at the moment.

How many signings do you think Wednesday will make?

AM: It's impossible to say for now. Danny and the recruitment staff are going about selecting targets and are sounding out potential deals - but to the best of our knowledge that's where things are at for now. Wednesday have traditionally done deals late in the winter window and as things stand it would appear as if that's the direction we're heading in this time, too.

JC: I think if you’d asked how many Wednesday *need* to make then I’d be saying three or four, but in terms of how many they will make - that’s anybody’s guess at this point in time. Getting deals done at Wednesday can be a laborious process, and with the manager and chairman not currently seeing eye-to-eye it’ll slow things down further.

Would you rather we spent £3m or so on top-quality players and push for playoffs, or hire a top-notch CEO/Director of Football and invest in a strategy that will carry us beyond Danny Röhl’s changes and define/create a model for future success?

AM: The latter. I have a controversial opinion that while promotion to the Premier League this season would be a remarkable, exciting, historic achievement and a pleasure to cover - we'd probably get another book out of it after all - it would be far better for Wednesday to do it in three or five seasons after years of sustained development on and off the field. History suggests they'd more than likely come back down - or certainly find it very, very tough not to.

I spoke to Brentford boss Thomas Frank after the Carabao Cup game and he suggested as much - that the Bees' ability to sustain themselves in the Premier League was built on the years they came closer and closer in the Championship, building every year. But Wednesday are in the position everybody is quite rightly in a rush because the truth is the manager isn't going to be around forever - and he's absolutely monumental to the progress made so far. The skeleton needs a body to work around it.

Hey, I certainly wouldn't turn down a tilt at immediate promotion but I'd sooner see big efforts made behind the scenes to build something comparable to Brentford or Brighton. But that's big, big money - and there's no suggestion that will be the case any time soon.

JC: I completely agree with Miller, here. I’d much rather have a long-term plan in place that puts things in place so that if (maybe read ‘when’) Danny Röhl leaves in the future, the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down into the void that he leaves behind.

How do you operate as a journalist in terms of getting information and deciding how you use it?

AM: It's not all as cloak and dagger as I thought it was before I got into the job. You build contacts around the game and share information - that's about the top and bottom of it. It's very agent-heavy these days and journalists have a decision to make on how they use certain information. You come to trust some guys more than others and contrary to popular belief we certainly don't publish everything we hear - there has to be a high degree of confidence everything is accurate. Unless there is absolute trust with the source of the information I'll always try to double or even triple-source anything major.

JC: This is actually a really interesting question, particularly because everyone is different. Like Alex says, the majority of it comes from contacts that have been built up over the years - within clubs, at agencies, well-placed ‘normal’ folk that happen to have good contacts on a local level. But everything has to be taken with a pinch of salt until you can shore it up - we don’t report everything that we get given to us, because - honestly - some of it is nonsense. By the time it goes up on the website, we have to be confident that it’s spot on, because if you keep getting things ‘wrong’ in the eyes of the public, then trust disappears quick.

Do you expect a ball-playing centre back or a no-nonsense one?

AM: Whoever comes in is going to have to be able to play. We've seen Danny's set-up rely heavily on building out from the back and the success of someone like Max Lowe in there has highlighted the point. But defensive organisation and responsibility will be foremost, too. A six-foot-four aerial machine with feet like Xavi? There's not many about.

JC: Yeah... what Alex said.

What’s going on with the goalkeeper situation?

AM: Beadle is very much the number one and it's expected he'll stay unless something unforeseen kicks off at Brighton. In terms of Pierce, it's a tough one. The idea of a loan is never ruled out but the feeling at the club is that he is developing in-house at S6 and that he should only be sent out on loan to a club that suits his skillset - they don't want to see Pierce Charles spending his afternoons booting the ball up to a number nine. If an appropriate club were to make the offer Wednesday would consider it. Ben Hamer is a very able back-up to Beadle.

JC: I know there are a lot of clubs interested in Pierce, both in terms of considering a permanent move and looking at him as a loan option for the remainder of the season. I’m expecting him to start against Coventry, but I wouldn’t rule out that possibly being his last game for the Owls this season - though a loan move could potentially only come late in the window.

Do you think Bailey Cadamarteri will be recalled?

AM: At this stage, I don't know. My gut instinct would say no. He's not played every minute he would probably have liked at Lincoln but he's scoring goals and getting the bruises to show for it. Danny would like to add forward players to the Wednesday squad.

JC: I don’t think so, no. Bailey is playing regularly, scoring goals, and he’s unlikely that he’d get more minutes in the Wednesday side as he is in Lincoln, so I’d definitely say that it’s more likely that he’ll stay than come back - because he can’t be sent out on loan anywhere else now.

How is it possible to lose out on loan targets as reported, but not have any talks - also as reported?

AM: Wednesday are going about sounding out deals and have a list of targets. The real football world doesn't run like Football Manager in that you lodge an enquiry with a club and go from there - recruitment staff will often sound-out the availability of players via agents and other contacts as well as clubs in order to line deals up.

Danny told me in his own words on Saturday that they were not in contact with any clubs over potential deals at that time and that, naturally, was a line we reported. My understanding as of Wednesday is that the Owls have continued to put feelers out with regard to potential targets on their list.

JC: I think the key thing here is that the timing of reporting isn’t always immediate. So, as I’m sure this question is alluding to Ronnie Edwards, it’s not necessarily the case that Wednesday made an enquiry about him the day after Röhl’s comments about the transfer window, it just happens that that was when I was able to run the story - I never said when the enquiry was made, or even who made it or to whom. So many people are involved in football deals, so even if Röhl and the chairman maybe aren’t best of buds at the moment, it doesn’t mean that the whole operation has shut down.