Mandaric still retains Premier dream for Owls

The Owls’ owner and chairman has been in prolonged talks with several would-be buyers of the club, including a consortium led by Chinese businessman Sammy Yu, but insists no firm offers are in the pipeline.

With Wednesday sat in the Championship relegation zone, without a win all season, and manager Dave Jones forced to operate within a limited budget, questions have been raised over Mandaric’s commitment to the club.

But the 75-year-old former Portsmouth and Leicester City owner yesterday came out fighting.

“It’s a shame, it’s the first time in my 14-plus years in England that anyone has even mentioned that,” said Mandaric, when questioned over his dedication to the Owls.

“How many chairmen arrived in this country and in 14-plus years took three clubs, which needed a lot of attention, a lot of ambition and a lot of money, and got them out of their troubles?

“I get upset because I know how ambitious I am and how much I care for this club. I put my money, which I made in an honest and hard way, back into football here every year to support efficiency.

“This club needs to be fed financially until we at least go to the Premier League.”

Mandaric is approaching his third anniversary in charge of Wednesday, a club he has revived from the brink of administration.

His target is the Premier League, but he has always been open to selling the club if potential new owners could offer increased funding to “accelerate” promotion.

“I don’t want to sell the club,” he stressed. “But I think that this club is a big club to even stay in the Championship. It needs an acceleration to reach the Premier League.

“Maybe somebody would come in and be more aggressive than me and more capable of pushing the club forward and I’m trying to accommodate those groups to do that.

“I try as much as I can. I devoted my time, my ambition and energy, but it needs more than that.

“I realise this club needs to go a lot more aggressively forward. I will do my best, I will be ambitious, I will try every which way to get back in the race with results and our goal remains to go to the Premier League.

“As long as I’m here, that will be my goal and my objective. I’m not going to let this club go anywhere else. I want it to be stabilised and, hopefully, take it to the Premier League.”

Mandaric has been frustrated at what he calls “tyre-kickers”, would-be buyers who just fuel speculation of a takeover rather than facilitate a deal.

“We are in the same place,” said Mandaric when asked about any potential deal.

“When the time comes, if there is a group or an individual who want to take the club over from me and accelerate the progress of the club, I will step out and support it.

“As long as those people are proper people, that’s my No 1 goal, to leave the club in good hands.

“Yes, there are a few groups of people, people who would be interested, but I am trying to protect our supporters from speculation. It’s unfair to the club and our supporters.

“When I have something tangible in front of us, I will go out and explain. Right now, we don’t have that.

“There are people who have shown interest, but I have never seen their seriousness to the point where I can go out and give information.

“Nobody has come forward and said ‘here’s the deal, here is how we are going to structure it, here’s what we are going to do going forward’. I haven’t seen anything like that.

“There are people who ask about information for the club, and were given it and are looking at the club.

“But I am the one investing in the club, the one in the firing line, and the one who wants to do what is best for the club in these circumstances.

“They (the fans) have a chairman who stays on top of the club, who really cares for the club. I am no different to any one of those people.”

Mandaric said he bought the Owls in just four days, and believes if a buyer was serious they would act swiftly with the club needing “a lot of financial support” to succeed.

“I show my commitment 
financially, and I hope that’s good enough,” said Mandaric, whose Owls side target their first win of the campaign tomorrow at South Yorkshire rivals Barnsley.

“If it’s not, I will be the first one to step out. But you can’t step out, this club needs a lot of nursing, a lot of financial support and right now I don’t want this club to go anywhere else but forward.

“Our support has seen this speculation, different people buying the club every day before I arrived.

“I bought this club in four days with due dilligence, when the club was in trouble. It took me four days to do it.

“Anyone who wants to buy a football club in a short period of time, he has to have love for the football, love for the club and the money.

“If they don’t have one of those three they will take forever and they will be nowhere.

“There’s always someone looking. I call those people tyre-kickers – they come to see the car, kick the tyres and go away. I will try to shield and protect our supporters from those kind of rumours,” concluded the Owls owner.