Summer plans being hatched for two Sheffield Wednesday squads with contracts on hold

Owls boss Danny Röhl had originally spoken of February as the month talks would get underway with some of the senior players coming to the end of their current deals at the end of the campaign - though those have been put on ice after an agreement by all parties to put club ahead of individual needs after a meeting held in the days after their defeat at Huddersfield Town early last month.

Behind the scenes, Wednesday are busy putting plans in place for the summer - and have squad lists drawn up for whether they are a Championship or League One club heading into the 2024/25 season.

"There are two things," Röhl told The Star. "Behind the scenes we are looking and considering what we can do. The key point at the moment, we are not in the situation where we know exactly where we will be next season. This makes things difficult.

"It means we prepare two shadow squads. We have one for 'this' and one for 'this'. This is our job and we must do this. Hopefully we can come over the line as soon as possible and then we can make contracts and get them done immediately. This is the challenge. We have something in our mind, I always speak with Kevin (Beadell - head of recruitment). We will have some big meetings in the following weeks and we will look at what we can do."

Including loan players, at least 18 senior Wednesday players are believed to be coming to the end of their deals at S6 in the coming months. Röhl believes his side are focused on the job in hand and spoke passionately about the need for the club to achieve something special in retaining their second tier status.

"In our situation you have both sides," he said. "For the players, maybe they sign a contract and we don't achieve our goals, then they (groans). We have it on both sides, it is not important. We had a big meeting after the Huddersfield game when we spoke about this topic. We agreed to make the focus about the now and here. If we achieve our goals everybody here will be in a win-win situation. We would have achieved a big, big goal.

"I'm not sure, maybe never before has a team had so many points behind and stayed in the league. It will be a wonder. I believe in our wonder. We will do this. In this situation it is not about a contract, it is about the club. This is what I demand from my players, myself and everybody. We achieve our goals and then we speak about the rest."