What former Sheffield Wednesday boss Chris Turner said about Dejphon Chansiri and the club's supporters
The ongoing suspension of football can serve as a watershed moment for Sheffield Wednesday from the training ground to the terraces and to the boardroom, according to former Owls player and manager Chris Turner.
The club entered the enforced break on a horror run of form that leaves them 15th in the Championship table, with different sections of support angling anger at players, manager and towards the club’s ownership.
Last night Wednesday owner Dejphon Chansiri was praised for his handling of the club’s payroll plan in this period, agreeing to ‘top-up’ the additional 20 per cent lost by club employees after they were placed on furlough. The Government’s ‘Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme’ covers 80 per cent of salaries.
And Turner, who played over 150 times as a goalkeeper for the Owls across two spells before managing the club between 2002 and 2004, told The Star this period can be used to ‘reset’ relationships from top to bottom.
Turner fronted an ultimately unsuccessful bid to buy Wednesday in 2010 and later served as chief executive of Chesterfield for six years.
“The club needs to regroup and rebuild confidence, not just inside the club but outside the club,” he said.
“Being the owner of a football club is very, very difficult. You're the first port of call when things go wrong.
“The questions that are being asked by supporters are pertinent questions. But we can’t be firing all bullets towards the owner, there needs to be some compromise.
“The situation off the field is going down the route of getting a little bit toxic. There needs to be give and take on both sides.”
Turner said that ticket pricing and supporter experience needs to be looked at, as well as the commercial offering at Hillsborough. Matchdays, he said, have ‘lost their soul’. It’s a ‘buzz’ they need to recover.
“I bump into supporters in town and it's the same things coming back,” he said. “We need to get the heartbeat going again.
“It's not about going out and buying 10 players and getting promotion, that doesn't work. I just don't want the club to go down that toxic route of fans being against the owner.
“Once that happens it's horrendous.”