Sheffield Wednesday senior man on how players have handled short wages issue

That’s according to Owls senior man Tom Lees, who speaking as a large percentage of several player wages went unpaid for a third week, maintained the need for focus among the playing staff.

The centre-half, Wednesday captain up until a few weeks ago, paid testament to the way the squad have gone about the issue, about which owner Dejphon Chansiri has been contacted by the PFA.

“We’ve got a very good group of players in that respect,” Lees said. With what’s been mentioned, it’s not something we’re totally brand new to, I think we’ve handled it very well. We’ve handled it well before.

“It’s nothing to do with the results, it’s happened before, we’ve handled it well as players.”

Last week Lees’ centre-half partner Chey Dunkley grew frustrated at questions about the wages issue. Josh Windass and others have declined to comment on it also, and Lees joined them in attempting to draw a line under the ongoing problems.

“I just want to separate that and talk about the football,” he said. “They’re two separate things. Most of the lads in the dressing room see it as two separate things as well.

“That’s why I don’t want to talk about it and that’s why other lads haven’t wanted to talk about it when they’ve asked you as well, because it starts to cross over. They should be kept as separate things.

“It’s something that needs to be sorted between us. There’s no use me coming out and going into any detail about that, really.

“I want to concentrate on my job, which is the football side of things. It’s best if I just talk about football instead of talking about those sort of things.”

Wednesday head into Saturday’s clash at Blackburn Rovers off the back of their first win in 10, four points from safety.

Lees said: “We need to focus on doing our job on the pitch. Regardless of anything else that goes on, the points tally at the moment isn’t good enough. We need to rectify that regardless of anything else.”

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