Simon Wilson has already outlined why he is the perfect fit for key Sheffield Wednesday role
Sheffield Wednesday remain poised to further strengthen their off-field department with the appointment of Simon Wilson.
Barring any late snags, Sheffield Wednesday are expected to appoint Simon Wilson as their new sporting director sooner rather than later.
The Star confirmed earlier this month the Stockport County chief executive is expected to swap Edgeley Park for Hillsborough and become the latest high profile addition to Arise Capital Partners’ project.
The US consortium, led by David Storch, wants to strive for excellence across the board at Hillsborough, meaning they are determined to assemble a proper structure. David Bruce was installed as the Owls’ first chief executive since 2019 earlier this month, arriving from Sunderland, and he has wasted no time in making a positive impact.
Wilson is expected to follow Bruce through the gates at Hillsborough and be installed as sporting director - a role former Wednesday owner Dejphon Chansiri never believed in taking advantage of during his ten-year spell in S6.
Wilson, a former analyst at Southampton and Manchester City, has a wealth of experience on the sporting side of the operation and is expected to play a key role in attempting to rebuild Wednesday’s squad this summer.
The 43-year-old, who is believed to have spent time in Sheffield earlier this month, has experience in squad building and resurrecting a club’s fortunes after six impressive years with Stockport. After joining the club in 2020 as director of football, County have been on an upward trajectory ever since.
After climbing out of the National League North less than a year before Wilson’s appointment, they stabilised in the National League before securing promotion to League Two in 2022. They then secured promotion to League One in 2024 and have since narrowly missed out on promotion to the Championship via the League One play-offs in each of the last two years.
Back in 2020, Stockport owner Mark Stott outlined a seven-year plan to try and reach the Championship - a goal that can still be achieved - and Wilson has played an important part in that ambition. Three years into that project, Wilson outlined how Stockport were already in the process of preparing for the second tier by laying the foundations.
Wilson, speaking at Training Ground Guru’s Scouting & Recruitment Webinar in March 2023, said: “We had this phrase of being 'Championship-ready'. We didn’t want to wait until that point to start behaving like a Championship club, we wanted to do it immediately and knew that would make us an attractive place for talent to come.
“To use a tech analogy, we wanted to get the hardware right from the start, rather than having to upgrade over time. We might need to update the software - that might be the players, certain staff - but we would have what was required to operate as a Championship club from day one.
“That meant the right number of staff, the right departments; it meant investing in the quality of the training pitches, the gym, the dining - everything you would expect if you were to walk into a club in the Championship.
“We also had to decide what we wanted the club’s identity to be. It had lost its way for a period of under-investment and we had to rethink what would work. It’s a well supported club, historic, working class and embedded in the community.”
Although Wednesday have not tumbled as far down the pyramid as Stockport, who were in the second tier of English football themselves until 2002, have in recent years, there are still parallels between the two projects amid a lack of investment at Hillsborough in recent years and the club being short of a clear philosophy.
After Chansiri’s dream of taking the club back to the Premier League in time for its 150th anniversary in 2017 failed, investment in the playing squad dried up. Investment in the infrastructure, however, was never really there to begin with.
A long-term plan needs installing at Hillsborough to give Wednesday a direction of travel, and Arise are set to implement one. They are understood to have set a mid-term objective of Wednesday becoming a competitive Championship club again, while plans are already well underway to try and improve the infrastructure and facilities.
Wednesday, ideally, need a new training ground, and Arise, long-term, are understood to be open to the prospect of finding the club a new training base at some point in the future. For now, though, quick-fix improvements have started to be made at Middlewood Road.
Investment across all areas of the club is something Wednesday have sorely lacked, meaning Arise’s takeover has quickly injected confidence and hope into the veins of Owls supporters.
With Wilson’s appointment still expected, his experience of working at Stockport, where long-term planning and investment in infrastructure has been key to their progress in recent years, should only serve Wednesday well.