Smiling faces of Owls’ fans reward enough for chairman Mandaric

On Saturday afternoon, just after the clock on the old South Stand at Hillsborough struck 4.20pm, another form of jury rose as one to give their verdict.

Over 38,000 stood to applaud and incessantly chant the name of Milan Mandaric, a football philanthropist who has rescued one of English football’s iconic clubs from the brink of oblivion.

On November 29, 2010, the Serbian-born business tycoon staved off the imminent threat of administration – which would have left an unremovable stain on one of English football’s oldest and proudest clubs.

He promised to clear the club’s multi-million pound debts, which had seen them struggling to keep their head above water since relegation from the Premier League over a decade earlier, and bring success to Hillsborough.

Eighteen months and over £20m later and he has achieved both. His standing ovation came as he watched his Sheffield Wednesday team go 2-0 up against Wycombe Wanderers to secure promotion back to the Championship.

All four stands at Hillsborough stood and saluted the directors’ box – those in the South Stand craned their necks to get a glimpse of the suited chairman – and it was a unique moment in Owls history.

“Those smiles on the faces were always going to be my reward,” said a jubilant Mandaric, as he spoke with the media in the bowels of Hillsborough over two hours after the final whistle had sparked massive celebrations inside the stadium.

“It’s my first full year here. I am a happy chairman and people have been giving me a lot of credit, but I am only as good as the people surrounding me.

“It was a great feeling. The most important thing in my life is trust, people I work with, deal with, and I see that recognition was there. It was a great thing to receive it.

“A girl came to me and said ‘Mr chairman, isn’t it nice to be very important?’ I said “Yes it is, but it’s more important to be nice.”

“That’s what you get from the people here. What happened tonight, didn’t just happen for tonight, relations were developed from day one, it was a build-up from that and expression was tonight.”

After reviving the fortunes of his previous clubs Portsmouth and Leicester City, Mandaric has suffered a tough 12 months with his high-profile court case. He even admitted he had considered walking away from football, such was the hurt caused to a proud and honourable man. Saturday restored his faith in humanity.

“You can’t say I am going to walk away from what I have seen (on Saturday), what I experienced,” he said. “I have seen that in Portsmouth for all those years, but here it is at a multiple level. It’s a great club, a massive club.”

The Hillsborough tribute was the culmination of 18 months of hard graft by the chairman, and the Wednesday staff, according to Mandaric.

He smiled: “I hope I didn’t get it because I am a handsome guy,” before adding: “I hope I got it because of the trust.

“From the first day I came here I said I will do my best, I am responsible. I have power, but more than power I am accountable. That’s important.

“I believe the club is the community; it’s not my club, it belongs to the community, to you people and your mum and dad before. I am just what I call the maintenance man, I like to develop myself in that community.”

Mandaric spoke with impeccable manners, like a favourite grandfather, relaxed in talking to the media. But when someone quipped with his penchant for changing managers, could the media have an assurance Dave Jones was assured of his job when he finally loses a game, Mandaric was keen to cast off the legend which follows him from club to club.

“I told him last weekend when we barely won the game, you have the job for another week,” joked Mandaric, talking about his manager Jones, who has gone 12 games unbeaten since replacing the sacked Gary Megson two months ago. “But I think it’s not fair from some of you guys, you always have the right to take me down when I deserve it and I have no problem with that. But to label me is not quite right. When I find the right man for the club, not for me, but for the club I do everything. I support every manager. When I came here I couldn’t find a nicer human being as a person as Alan Irvine. I gave him full support, I bought some players, spent some money, support him. Same thing for the next manager. I will do everything I can for David Jones, but there is no blank cheque.

“When I find the right man I will do everything to keep him.”

One of the first people to text Mandaric at the final whistle on Saturday was his former Pompey manager Harry Redknapp, now at Tottenham and in the thick of the race for a Champions League spot in the Premier League.

Mandaric points to Redknapp and his former manager at Leicester, the former Owls captain Nigel Pearson, as two managers whom he never sacked because he had found the right man to match the club’s ambitions.

“Two guys I have tremendous admiration for, my buddy Harry (Redknapp) who just left me a text message and he said ‘you have done it now, now it’s my turn’. And the other one is Nigel Pearson who I worked with at Leicester. I didn’t let go any one of those guys. I didn’t let go of Nigel Pearson, he wanted to go to Hull because I sold the club.

“The third guy ((Dave Jones) that I really feel the same for, I have a very good manager and this club is lucky to have him.

“When you let somebody go, it doesn’t mean they are bad people. Ian Holloway took me down, then what did he do? – went to Blackpool and went to the Premier League.

“It doesn’t mean they are a bad manager, just like a player. Sometimes you see a player, and he’s useless, manager doesn’t want him, but he goes elsewhere and explodes and becomes tremendous. It’s like a puzzle, it doesn’t fit right there for that job, but goes somewhere else and does the job.”

All Wednesday fans will be hoping Mandaric has completed the Owls puzzle – that had stumped many in the Hillsborough boardroom over the last decade – and Jones can take Wednesday marching back to the promised land of the Premier League.