The Owls are making changes behind the scenes following the takeover by Arise Capital Partners

Sheffield Wednesday’s pursuit of a new sporting director is expected to take further steps forward following the conclusion of the League One play-offs.

The Owls are putting foundations in place behind the scenes for a brighter future following the takeover by Arise Capital Partners. The club has lacked a proper off-field structure for many years, which was a major criticism aimed at former owner Dejphon Chansiri.

But Arise, led by David Storch, listened to those concerns and quickly appointed David Bruce, formerly of Sunderland, as the club’s new chief executive officer, who was introduced to the fans on the pitch before the final game of the season against West Brom.

Bruce has made a positive impression already, particularly at last week’s supporters’ trust AGM, where he answered questions in great detail. During that evening, he spoke glowingly about Wednesday’s soon-to-be new sporting director, expected to be Simon Wilson, who has been at Stockport County for six seasons, helping them climb from non-league to the cusp of the Championship.

Although he did not name him, Bruce said: “We are close and I think it’s been well documented that we want to put a proper structure in place, a proper executive team in place. That’s the right way to run the club, it provides stability and it creates transparency, it helps build trust and it creates accountability from top to bottom.

“Most clubs these days have a sporting director. We’re very close with our preferred candidate, we’ll hopefully have some news on that pretty soon. The guy we’ve got in mind has an incredible track record and he’s a great human which is really important. It’s someone I can imagine going in the trenches with, coming together and figuring out what we need to do to move this club forward.

“He’s a really, really deep thinker with high emotional intelligence, just a really, really good guy. Hopefully we can get that through and we can get it done and you can get to meet that person soon. That person will have accountability for football performance, I’ll hold him accountable because that person will report into me.”

The move to appoint Wilson is expected to gather pace now that Stockport’s season has ended. They were beaten 4-1 by Bolton in the League One play-off final at Wembley over the bank holiday weekend. Although Wilson’s departure had already been announced by Stockport, his time at the club did not officially end until County’s season was officially over.

“It’s on record that I would not have bought the club if I hadn’t met Simon, and it’s clear how much progress has been made over the past six years,” Stockport owner Mark Stott said.