Sibon, alarm clocks and deadline day deals: Inside Sheffield Wednesday’s 'traumatic' first-ever January transfer window

The season had not been much fun to that point. Sat second-bottom of the table, Turner had been unable to inspire a ‘new manager bounce’ since his appointment in November, taking over from Terry Yorath to become their fifth manager around about two-and-a-half years.

Though a dream for lifelong Wednesdayite and former player Turner, in footballing terms it was a fairly miserable role, taking the wheel of a ship that was sinking in a post-Premier League typhoon of financial difficulty.

And where previous managers could have attempted to wheel and deal their way out of trouble throughout the season, their new boss had been landed the unenviable task of navigating the first-ever January transfer window.

“We were desperate for players,” he tells The Star two decades later. “I'd been there two months and you could see a mile off the squad wasn't strong enough for what is now Championship football. The players that had been brought in weren't good enough. I can say this now 20 years on of course!

“You're always struggling to find good players. Whenever you go into a job you know you need at least half a dozen players to give yourself a chance and it's difficult to do that in January for obvious reasons.”

The ‘winter window’ ruling had been brought in as part of a UEFA-wide legal compromise with the European Commission. It was designed, clubs were told, to streamline how the transfer system worked and offer clubs and players, particularly at the top end of the game, stability on contract lengths and so on.

For clubs struggling lower down the ladder, it was seen as a nuisance and although back then EFL clubs were still permitted to loan players outside the window, it was surmised that with a deadline in place, the balance of power would shift towards players able to hold out for inflated wages and would spark mid-season ‘panic buys’ clubs would live to regret.

What transpired in that initial window at least was a mood of caution, with only 15 cash deals done in the top four tiers of the game. Cash was parted with – Jonathan Woodgate and Robbie Fowler join Newcastle and Manchester City from Leeds for £9m and £6m respectively, but the water was relatively calm out there.

In terms of actual deadline day deals, there were 31 in total but 13 of those were loans. Middlesbrough provided the drama, signing Michael Ricketts from Bolton for £3.5m and Derby pair Malcolm Christie and Chris Riggott for £5m combined.

Above all, the sense was that nobody really knew what to make of it.

Turner remembers: “Not a lot of people really wanted it. Pretty much everybody I spoke to at the time wanted to keep it the same as how we had it. But it was something that was always going to come in so it was a case of getting on about it and we were learning on the job - it was a case of waiting to see how things would happen.

“I was getting nicknamed the 'loan ranger'. We had naff all money so it was the only way to change how things were going and on the whole, for what we had at our disposal, I think we did pretty well really.

“Even all these years on the January window is no good. It puts pressure on owners, managers, even players, agents and I don't think there are many great deals done in January really even now.”

The ‘loan ranger’ tag was one you didn’t have to explain to anyone who had been keeping an eye on Wednesday’s progress that season. Since Turner’s arrival just two months earlier six new faces had been brought in on a temporary basis. Not many made much of a lasting impression.

Dominique Krief, Ryan Green, Allan Johnston, a man called Garry Monk and Lee Bradbury had all come in. Adam Proudlock, a young forward from Wolves, had come in for a month with a view to staying longer and scored two in five before he was hauled back to Molineux.

Proudlock would sign on a permanent basis the season after but that initial dip-and-go had been an annoyance to a manager and fan base that had had liked what they’d seen and showed the frailties of the loan market.

And when January came around, it became clear Wednesday were going to lose their best – if at times a little frustrating – player. It became increasingly clear he’d go for nothing, too.

“The club was in financial problems, we all know that,” Chris remembers as an offer to take on the wages of Dutch forward Gerald Sibon came in from Heerenveen.

“I think I was the manager that got the best out of Gerald. We'd just got him playing and he had really contributed. We beat Nottingham Forest when they were top of the league and Gerald was superb. I'd developed an understanding of him, we’d just got him going and I didn't want him to leave.

“But the timing of it meant we were able to bring Darryl Powell in and to strengthen one or two other areas. I do feel that if we'd have kept Gerald he would've been more than useful and we might just have stayed up. The deal for Wednesday was to save £150,000 or £200,000 a year, which was an important thing for the club.

“The deal was put to the club by his agent and it was a deal frankly we couldn't refuse. It allowed us to bring one or two in. I got on well with him and was starting to get the best out of him, but the move was a great deal for him and his agent and he went back to Holland.”

Powell was an experienced and physically powerful midfielder who had found himself out of favour at Birmingham City. He joined the club for a low undisclosed fee on January 16, two days after Sibon’s exit was completed. Carl Robinson joined on loan from Portsmouth the day after. Ian Hendon later left to join to Peterborough United.

In terms of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, Turner had one more seat to shift as that alarm clock bleated.

Such was the empty-pocket nature of the club at the time, the headline story heading into Wednesday’s first-ever deadline day wasn’t the chasing of a bold Sibon replacement or the loan signing of an exciting Premier League youngster sure to have fans off their seat.

It was the signing of Brian Barry-Murphy, a young Preston North End utility man who had only a handful of senior appearances to his name outside of the League of Ireland.

“That last day - anything can happen,” Turner recalled. “It was stressful. I wanted him in. You wake up the last day and the club that he was at could have changed their mind, another club could come in and offer more money, the player could go off the deal.

“Until any deal is over the line it's not done and with the deadline coming in, all managers and clubs were under different pressures which made it a different proposition trying to get things sorted. It is traumatic because clubs have had a few weeks to do their business and there's so much done on the last 24 hours - its crazy!

“With no disrespect to Brian his signing was never going to set the fan base on fire, but he was something we needed in someone that could play left back and he was left-footed, which we needed. He was a good player but he was never going to win us promotion the next year. He was honest, he worked hard and he gave his best.

“The fact was he was better than what we had at that particular time. That’s where we were at.”

Brian Barry-Murphy through the door, then. Job done, window closed. The winds of optimism breezed through Hillsborough as they welcomed promotion-chasing Wolverhampton Wanderers to Hillsborough the very next day. A new win for their fresh start, surely?

This is Wednesday we’re talking about. Barry-Murphy made his debut. Wolves won 4-0. And who scored a brace but Adam Proudlock. Something about the Wednesday Way.

A run of one win in 10 followed the defeat and despite an upturn in results in the final weeks, they were relegated to the third tier.

Sheffield Wednesday’s first winter transfer window? Traumatic indeed. 20 years on, it’s not clear if anybody quite knows what to make of them still.

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