The pair are co-ordinating a proposed takeover deal for the cash-strapped club that will involve investors from the US, India and the UK.

The next step of that process is likely to be a new share issue, subject to approval by shareholders, which will bring funds into the club before the end of March.

Over the next three months, Strafford and Parker also intend to set about restoring the club's battered reputation.

Manager Brian Laws will not be able to spend heavily in the New Year transfer window but, significantly, will be under no pressure to sell any of the club's best young players.

Various initiatives will also be introduced to increase gates at Hillsborough – which have dropped to the lowest level for eight years – and there will be significant improvements made in day-to-day operations.

According to Strafford, the Owls, who have debts in the region of £25m, risked going into administration without these changes.

"Clubs have two different ways of getting into the Premier League," said Strafford yesterday. "They either splash the cash and hope it works out or they get the components right off the pitch involving the fans and management. We favour the latter approach.

"In terms of quantity of investment, it may take £50m to take this club forward. That figure is not far from our business plan. What we are saying to investors is 'What do you want to do – blow your money on a Premier League club that does not offer longevity or gamble pragmatically here where the platform will be right?'

"When I was a kid, Sheffield Wednesday was one of the most respected clubs in the country," he said. "It had a brand that was respected globally with a heritage to match Arsenal's. It was a family club, all about hard work and fairness, not a place where you should be deterred from loving it!

"We want fans to be happy in their dealings with this club and, even if we lose, we want them to walk away from the game saying the club on and off the field had done its best.

"You only have to log on to OwlsTalk (a supporters' website) for half an hour to see what every single fan is complaining about. It is not difficult," he added.

"Everyone can debate how the club slipped out of the Premier League (nine years ago) but they never restructured to take the club forward again. It became stuck in a frustrated environment.

"There are some world-class people around who would have been prepared to help this club out in the past had the relationship not been damaged," he claimed. "We also know that players will, in the right financial environment, prefer to come here than go to any other Championship club.

"We want to unwind the pain that many fans have felt. We have a half-empty stadium so why not let schoolkids in for free? It is a great opportunity to build a relationship with the fans of tomorrow at no real cost.

"The politics of the club have dominated conversations for 90 minutes every Saturday afternoon for too long. That is not the environment we want anymore. We want to put those days behind us and cement a better future for the club with new funding.

"If we had not taken this action, we might have seen player sales to protect the balance sheets and administration might have been something on the agenda."

Chief executive Parker admitted that the new regime needs to get things right quickly.

The existing Owls directors have given the new syndicate until March 31 to provide new funds. They are also aware that previous proposals have bitten the dust due to the difficulties in pacifying creditors and majority shareholders.

"We are conscious of the fact that we have to deliver by March 31 and are now in the honeymoon period," said Parker. "Some investors have been put off by the difficulty of 'herding the alley cats'. We want to call an amnesty with those people and go back to being a proper business.

"It could take three to five years to get back to the Premier League," he said. "We have analysed what has happened in the Championship over the last 10 years to work out how much it costs to get promotion. We know how many players are used, how old they are, and how they got paid. We also know what the losses will be if we spend that amount of money,"

Parker and Strafford have been alarmed by some of the minor problems that might easily have been fixed by the previous regime.

They included non-provision of breakfasts for players on away trips, the absence of gloves for sale in the club shop during winter months, and difficulties in relation to purchasing tickets.

South Yorkshire Police have forced the Sheffield derby to switch to a 12 noon kick-off on February 7.

The Blades have given Wednesday 3,000 tickets in the lower tier of the Halliwells Stand for the Bramall Lane Championship game.

To avoid repeats of last season's troubles, with missiles thrown by Blades sitting in the upper tier, United have introduced a range of safety measures including keeping the first three rows of the upper tier empty, new CCTV cameras, more police and stewarding, plus ticket restrictions.

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