Sheffield Wednesday: Born 1867, Reborn 2026 - How Owls new owners brought positivity back to a fanbase starved of happiness
Twenty-two years ago, Ken Bates breezed into a press conference in a city centre hotel and declared his interest in investing heavily in Sheffield Wednesday.
Of the many questions he was asked, one was about the future of the then manager Chris Turner, a likeable figure, a decent gaffer, and a name etched into Owls folklore having palmed a Brian McClair header over the cross bar to preserve Wednesday’s 1-0 win in the Rumbelows Cup final of 1991.
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“Who’s ever heard of a goalkeeper making a successful manager,” Bates retorted, leaving Turner, the assembled media and the Owls fanbase under no illusions about just how ruthless he intended to be.
Turner would later shrug it off, but needn’t have bothered. Bates was not wanted at Hillsborough so headed up the M1 and bought Leeds United.
I was reminded of that bombastic Bates press conference this week when I attended an evening with Sheffield Wednesday’s new ownership group in a hospitality suite at Hillsborough.
Simon Wilson, confirmed as the club’s new sporting director only hours earlier, was sat alongside the three American businessmen who rescued the club from the darkness of the dying days of the Dejphon Chansiri era - David Storch, Michael Storch and Tom Costin - and the club’s new chief executive David Bruce.
The panel that are trying to revive a famous old club were asked about the future of the current manager, Henrik Pedersen, a man who achieved just two wins all last season. Wilson confidently took the mic.
“The challenge last season was incredible for the coach and the coaching staff,” began Wilson. “They were able to create wins without winning, they weren’t able to win on the pitch but they were able to win in another way by keeping and bringing people together.
"What I look for is when times are hard, how do you keep people together in that moment? You look at how did he lead in that moment. How do you keep people buying-in for the greater good and not just for themselves? Henrik did an incredible job with this.
"He wants us to be a very attacking team. My job is to give him the tools to go out and play exactly the way he wants to play.”
A manager’s position can feel very vulnerable when a new ownership group comes in. Will they want their own man? Will my style jar with their approach?
Not many go down the Bates road of instantly putting the manager on notice, but equally, not all side so unequivocally behind an existing coach, particularly one who oversaw a relegation in record fashion no matter the mitigation.
Future results will dictate how long they stand by Pedersen but for now, that response was symptomatic of the charm offensive Wednesday’s new owners have been on since long before they were named preferred bidders by the club’s administrators.
Since their takeover was completed on May 2, with a full house at Hillsborough greeting the positivity and the dawning of a new era, the new ownership group have been working hard to live up to their promise of being good stewards of a club woven into English football tapestry that has not known sustained positivity for over three decades.
Some £6m has already been committed to upgrading Hillsborough and the club’s training ground.
A new premium experience hospitality package has been unveiled, with famous faces - sent into exile by the Chansiri reign - encouraged back with open arms. The hospitality suite Sheffield’s business leaders were greeted in on Monday will become known as Hirsty’s Social.
It is all part of a positive PR machine by the American investors that has already yielded an impressive 21,000 season ticket sales for English football’s third tier next season.
Speaking freely before the formalities began, Costin - one of the three men to have invested some of their fortune in the Owls - admitted his surprise at how an evening like this, a win-win in terms of positive PR, was something that had become so alien at the club in recent years. Costin is from Boston and a big Red Sox fan, so knows a thing or too about being in a sports mad city that yearns for success. His team broke famous ‘Curse of the Bambino’ to win baseball’s World Series in 2004, so he knows what success looks like and what it means.
Speaking publicly, he told the audience: “A lot of clubs have ceilings, we really do believe this club can reach the heights we all want to reach, but we have work to do.”
There is always rhetoric at these events, they were selling hospitality packages after all. But the Aspire Partnership is also trying to promote a new era. “Sheffield Wednesday: Born 1867; Reborn 2026” blazed out from the screen behind them.
They have made an impressive start, but encouragingly they know there is a long way to go.