Sheffield Wednesday must be resolute to ride Championship storm

In the club’s final game before lockdown, the Owls were trounced 5-0 at Brentford, their second five-goal evisceration during a year which has been brutal in terms of results during what has ultimately proved to be another forgettable season.

Fortunately, Wednesday’s relatively strong and solid first-half of the campaign has insulated them in terms of their league position.

When football closed shop, they were safely ensconced in mid-table with a nine-point buffer above the relegation zone.

A PPG finish would have kept Monk’s side away from trouble – even accounting for their abysmal new year slide.

Of course, the ‘elephant in the room’ is the club’s charge for breaching Profitability and Sustainability rules following the sale of Hillsborough and the case could be heard before an independent disciplinary commission this summer.

A hefty points deduction if they are found guilty – Wednesday have strenuously denied financial misconduct – could, in theory at least, carry the potential for the club to go down if any punishment is enforced this season and is sufficiently punitive.

Expect all manner of legal challenges if that was the case.

Should that Doomsday scenario not arise and the season was to be decided on PPG, it would enable the club to reboot and effectively start again, with several of the club’s big-earners from the Carlos Carvalhal era likely to move elsewhere as the club cut their cloth and cope with a different financial landscape. It would have provided the club with a bit of a clean break.

Instead, Wednesday must deal with the here and now and attempt to safely negotiate their final nine league games before attention turns to the future.

Not for the first time, Garry Monk is wearing a hard hat, just as he was at former club Birmingham City in particular.

He has been preparing his squad for football’s return without fully knowing if several key players – including top-scorer Steven Fletcher, rejuvenated defender Morgan Fox and a potential game-changer in Fernando Forestieri – will be around for longer than the end of this month when their current contracts expire.

Wednesday are in ongoing dialogue with all those players who are coming off contract – including loan signings whose deals also finish at the end of June – about extensions, with midfielder Kieran Lee being the first to sign up for the rest of 2019-20.

It represents a start and Monk will be pinning his hopes on others following suit, more especially Fletcher and Fox, who have come into their own this season.

But as it stands, Monk cannot say with any assurance what the make-up of his squad will be on July 1 – in a month which will see the Owls face seven games in a hectic three-week spell.

Wednesday’s tough run-in adds to the degree of difficulty.

They face long trips to Bristol City, Swansea, QPR and Fulham which will be testing logistically and offer challenges on the pitch with three of those sides in the top-six shake-up.

Home games with three promotion aspirants in Nottingham Forest, Preston and West Brom will also be demanding and there are also Hillsborough appointments with two teams potentially fighting for survival in their Yorkshire rivals Huddersfield Town and Middlesbrough, to fit in.

As the league table stands today, Wednesday will face five of the top seven between now and July 22.

It will be a time when Monk would be forgiven for being pragmatic in the way he sets his team up.

In years gone by, the risk-averse style of much of the Carvalhal era drew plenty of criticism from supporters when the club were fighting it out at the top echelons of the table.

Now it is needs must and Wednesdayites would happily settle for some substance over style to enable the club to draw a line under 2019-20 and go again next term.

The need for Wednesday to get back to defensive basics and become hard to beat, first and foremost, is an obvious starting point for Monk when they step out against Forest on Saturday.

Having successfully built that foundation in his early months at S6, so he must do so once more.

Wednesday gave little away on home soil in Monk’s first three months up to Christmas.

On the road, they showed an ability to soak up pressure, retain a level of solidity and possessed threat on the counter-attack. The only real disappointments were at Blackburn and Hull.

One thing that the elongated spell without football should have also given Owls players is time to reset mentally after a bruising first few months of 2020.

It should provide personal motivation in the weeks ahead.

Monk referenced the need to ‘mend a few fences’ and ‘right a few wrongs’ in his pre-match press conference on Thursday, allied to the notion of pride coming from within among his squad.

In truth, he has made those sort of comments more than he would care to mention already this year.

Now he and Wednesdayites will want to see firm deeds out on the pitch.

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