What's in it for David Storch and Arise at Sheffield Wednesday?
Alan Biggs on potential incoming Sheffield Wednesday owners and the possible reasons behind their proposed takeover
Had a chance street-corner chat the other day with someone once on the inside of Sheffield Wednesday.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s in it for the people taking over the club? What are they buying? It’s just a crowd, isn’t it?”
Some asset, mind you. It’ll be on full colourful display this Saturday with, incredibly, Hillsborough bursting at the seams for a sell-out final game of the club’s most nightmarish ever season.
Amazing support is certainly a reason, probably the main one, why David Storch and Tom Costin remain intent on completing a deal despite all the many barriers in their way, hopefully this week.
Not that the former inside man was suggesting questionable motives. As with this writer, a favourable impression has formed.
And besides, the Arise group simply can’t be in it for purely business reasons, at least not in the short to medium term. Long term maybe, however long that is, probably a considerable number of years.
Meantime, a period of substantial cost at the coal face of excavating an outfit for which they are already paying above logical value at £18m.
So it has to be something of a hobby-based interest initially. Again, a caveat has to be applied to this as “rich man’s toy” are dirty words in the lexicon of football club ownership.
After all, isn’t that what Wednesday represented to Dejphon Chansiri? And we all know how that ended.
But generalisations are misleading and it all depends on the individual or individuals involved - as Wrexham’s celebrity owners have spectacularly proved.
There won’t be the same glitz about Storch’s Owls but if the heart is in the right place, and above all the brain, who can decry a part recreational project if it benefits the club?
At this stage, it is win-win for Wednesday and lose-lose for Storch. What matters is: are they the “right” people? Time will tell but all the indicators are positive.
Besides, you can’t under-estimate a crowd, even if it is near enough the only asset. It’s fundamentally what a club is.
The guarantee for Storch, of huge and grateful backing, won’t appear on any of the documentation. But it is the driving force for a potentially momentous week. Everything crossed.