Plate-spinning Sheffield Wednesday must hop towards fresh new targets in transfer market

The steady early stream of potential transfer links have dried up a touch, the search for a new manager seemingly being carried out firmly behind closed doors. From the outside looking in, the hope is that Sheffield Wednesday are the proverbial swan; calmly cutting through the water as far as anyone can see, but making hurried progress beneath the water.

There’s no time to waste and though Dejphon Chansiri made clear the reasons Championship recruitment can often take longer than that in the third tier, though he sought to express the need for relative patience, dugout appointments and the addition of squad members would be most welcome - as he said would be the goal - sooner rather than later.

The managerial hunt set to one side, what was encouraging before the shock departure of Darren Moore last week was that Wednesday seemed to be turning ever-so-slightly towards a model of youth and dynamism. Regan Poole, Brooke Norton-Cuffy; the early names suggested a throw forward.

As was repeatedly made clear from last summer on, the bulk of Wednesday’s current squad was set up to inspire promotion from League One; big, strong and experienced units with scars on their legs and hairs on their chest. In third tier press boxes up and down the country, the comment was made by not-so-regular Wednesday viewers on countless occasions; this was a monstrous unit set up for gnarled, spiteful afternoons at places described as ‘tricky’. Moore more or less said as much.

With quality coupled-in in no small doses, matches were opened-up and a few thrashings delivered as Wednesday racked-up a record points total and a famous promotion via Wembley.

But the release of the Championship fixtures last Thursday set up a reality - that the second tier is a different beast, so often of a different style altogether. The requirements of the division are not just different in quality, but in how the best teams go about winning football matches.

These aren’t the mere ramblings of a dumpy-and-clueless football writer, but are garnered through conversations with football people that know the game far better than those of us with laptops and ticket stubs. The message is that there are days the old guard will stand tall - literally and metaphorically - but on many other days athleticism, dynamism and pace supersede the need for gnarl.

Wednesday’s squad has speed with the likes of Dominic Iorfa, Josh Windass and Mallik Wilks - we can hope to see much more from him this season if he can use the summer to put injury struggles behind him - but with Fisayo Dele-Bashiru and quite possibly Marvin Johnson heading for the exit door, there is pace to replace.

Things will begin to move quickly at Hillsborough, you’d think. There are certainly empty seats to fill in the dugout of course and with 14 senior players currently on the books and a profile shift to ponder, there’s plenty of work to be done in the coming weeks as the club’s in-house recruitment team set about working down their lists.

As that Icelandic songstress made clear, things can go ‘Zing boom’ quickly enough. A fan base watches on in hope.