Danny Röhl comments offer a reminder of what Sheffield Wednesday need most from takeover
Sheffield Wednesday are going to require significant investment once they are in their hands of new owners - but that won’t count for anything without a plan.
What do Sheffield Wednesday need most from the takeover coming their way? Investment is the obvious answer. And a lot of it.
However, an owner with deep pockets without a plan to go with it is the last thing they need.
After Dejphon Chansiri arrived at Hillsborough in January 2015, he committed himself to a two-year plan to take Wednesday back to the Premier League to coincide with their 150th anniversary in 2017. He had good intentions and he parted with a small fortune to assemble the best squad Wednesdayites of a certain age have ever seen at Hillsborough.
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Unfortunately for him and Wednesday, the plan failed to come to fruition and the Owls have never recovered. Years of financial mismanagement and a relegation to League One, trigged by a points deduction, followed, meaning Chansiri’s Premier League died long ago.
Just under five weeks since the Thai businessman relinquished his control of the club, putting it into administration, those currently in charge at Hillsborough are hoping to hand over the keys in the not too distant future, with the takeover process understood to be moving in the right direction.
Bids have been submitted over the last few days, and a ‘preferred bidder’ is hoped to have been identified by the first week in December.
With NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) having been signed, the identities of those in the running to succeed Chansiri at the top table at Hillsborough are currently unknown. It has created a sense of anticipation and optimism that a brighter future is right around the corner for one of English football’s oldest and most historical clubs.
With Hillsborough, the club’s Middlewood Road training base and the squad in desperate need of care and attention, whoever is lucky enough to land this sleeping giant will already know they are going to have to part with a small fortune beyond the purchase price. Wednesday have lacked significant investment for a number of years and need cash to be pumped in by the millions.
But as both Wednesday and several other clubs have proven down the years, money being chucked at it willy-nilly will only take you so far. It needs to be spent wisely with a proper structure and plan to support it.
Structure was one thing that was lacking at Hillsborough under Chansiri. His reluctance to delegate meant he had the final say on just about every decision the club made. As the Owls’ current position shows, it was no way to run a club successfully.
Röhl exposed Chansiri’s biggest failing
Chansiri’s failure to implement a proper structure was one of the reasons why former manager Danny Röhl pushed for an exit throughout the summer. His experience from his time at Bayern Munich meant he arrived in S6 in October 2023 with very high expectations.
Chansiri’s approach must have come as a great shock to the German, despite him being capable of galvanising a fractured group of players to complete an improbable survival mission in his first season in charge.
After being appointed as Rangers’ head coach last month, Röhl reflected on his time in charge at Hillsborough, referencing the lack of a proper football structure.
“So far I must say, we have a great connection and relationship,” Röhl said, addressing his relationship with Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh. “We are always in touch after games, we speak or it is a message. I think this is good. I must say, I missed such a relationship in the last two years.
“All of the people around me try to support me, they help in all the different parts of this job and my focus is to give them a lot back. This is my responsibility.
“I would say it was a different environment. I think the club structure was a bit different. It was just the owner and me.
“I did from recruitment to match prep to looking for pre-season camps, a lot of things by myself. Of course, I had some great people. I think the relationship in the club was good. There were a lot of good people there and they're still there.”
Having the correct structure and a plan in place is arguably more important than a bottomless pit of cash.
Wednesday, who never had a director of football or sporting director during Chansiri’s reign, have not had a long-term plan in years, jumping from one soap opera to the next under Chansiri. Also, their recruitment model was often of a scattergun approach, with no correlations between one window and the next.
Wednesday’s next owner must decide what type of club they want the Owls to become and what route they need to go down to deliver that particular blueprint. Without putting those fundamentals in place, it won’t matter how deep their pockets are.