What’s actually happened as Dejphon Chansiri seeks to secure a debt against Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium?

After BBC Radio Sheffield explained that there was a pending charge registered by New Avenue Projects Limited – revealing the presence of a third party being involved in the financing of loan – we spoke to Dr Dan Plumley, a football finance expert at Sheffield Hallam University to break it down.

Plumley told The Star, “I haven’t seen any of the documentation yet, but what it relates to is that there is now a charge that has secured a debt against the stadium.

“Essentially what that means is that somebody has to make payments linked to that charge - very much like a traditional mortgage would work.

“It looks like there’s a third-party involved now. which means there is probably interest payments as well, and what that becomes further down the line is that somebody else owns the stadium and the chairman is repaying that debt.”

But is it something to worry about? Not according to Plumley.

“It’s not a problem now as things stand,” he explained. “It’s not a problem if they can keep up the repayments… If you look at the last accounts, Chansiri has put in £77m of his own money that we can see since he arrived, so it’s clear he has the funds to back the club.

“It is debt, and if you can service that debt then there’s no problem.”

He also explained that, with no reasons – or figures – having been given for the decision, the Owls chairman may be just looking for a short-term fix given the pandemic and lack of revenue.

He added, “We’re in an unprecedented time with the pandemic and that’s had an effect on cashflow and he’s already topped up staff on furlough.

“There are revenue issues and it’s absolutely feasible that this could be a fix for a short-term cashflow situation.

“We’ve not seen figures with this, so it could be a big loan or it might not, but it was down as £7.5m repayment a year initially in the club accounts, so it could be that this loan is linked to that value.”

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