The Sheffield Wednesday fans hoping to send a message by staying away from Middlesbrough FC game

When it happens just before 8pm on Wednesday, the reaction will be rather different. Rather than clapping along, the first response will be to scan the stands for empty blue seats. On a television screen.

This is what they have been driven too.

The televised Championship game against high-flying Middlesbrough has been chosen as the next step in the escalation of the Sheffield Wednesday Supporters Trust's battle against chairman/owner Dejphon Chansiri whose money and/or appetite to continue bankrolling the club appeared to run dry in the spring.

Fans of the 158-year-old club are being asked to stay away on Wednesday night, even if they have season tickets. Protest slogans will be projected onto the side of the Kop before kick-off.

It is a big ask for the diehards who follow the club home and away, and in many cases have done for years but James Silverwood, vice-chairman of the trust, says sacrifices are needed to rid the club of the Thai businessman. Even administration if needs be.

This will be the third match where an official boycott has been organised but League Cup ties at home to Leeds United and Grimsby Town, featuring weakened teams, were not the same. This is a big sacrifice.

"It is, but it's all for the right cause," says Silverwood, a match-going fan "all my life, really", a season ticket-holder for several years and away game regular until the fight against Chansiri kept him away from all this season's matches bar Leicester City away and Queens Park Rangers at home, on a spare ticket.

"We are aware it is a considerable sacrifice, but we're asking for a sacrifice for a reason, for a purpose, for a greater good, to help accelerate Dejphon Chansiri's decision to sell Sheffield Wednesday Football Club. We're taking a stand as fans to say that we will no longer fund our own decline.

"Dejphon Chansiri is chronically mismanaging our football club. He is not funding it appropriately, he's not managing it appropriately, he's not leading it appropriately. He doesn't understand the community and he insults the fans.

"The biggest step we can take is to say that we will no longer fund that behaviour. And unfortunately that does mean taking actions that are very difficult like missing games.

"The boycott's about communicating to Dejphon Chansiri through the national media because it's live on Sky, that not only are people no longer willing to support him as chairman, that they're no longer willing to fund him.

"It's a visible protest to remind Dejphon Chansiri that when he tries to sell season tickets again, whenever that might be, that they're not going to buy them.

"I think season ticket holders are the same as any other fan. They want Sheffield Wednesday to have a new owner."

Silverwood believes the issue has not been as divisive as it could have been.

"The Sheffield Wednesday Supporters Trust has always tried to get the maximum number of people engaged with the defunding campaign and our wider matchday protests as possible, take as many people along with us as we can," he says.

"We've tried to communicate the reasons why we're engaging in these campaigns, including defunding and boycotting expenditure at the club, and do it in a sequential process.

"We started with asking people not to buy shirts, then asking them not to buy retail and merchandise in the ground on matchday. Then we did two home boycotts for the League Cup matches and now we're doing a full league game boycott.

"You need as many people involved as possible and to do that, you need to clearly communicate why these actions are necessary, why the sacrifice is worth it. But also not go to the strongest course of action immediately.

"The buy-in has been superb. No protest campaign is ever going to get 100 per cent adherence.

"But what I think has been shown over the past few months at Sheffield Wednesday is that there is now a considerable majority in favour of our campaign's objective, which is to convince Dejphon Chansiri to sell Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, to convince him that his time as owner of Sheffield Wednesday needs to be brought to an end.

"You might not necessarily see everybody standing up on 10 minutes, you might not see everybody boycotting games, but there is now a considerable majority, if not 100 per cent of people, who think Dejphon Chansiri needs to leave Sheffield Wednesday."

Silverwood is unsure what Wednesday's attendance will be but he has been delighted at how much both the Owls and wider football community have rallied.

“With the other boycotts, we were waiting in the same way as everybody else for the TV screens to tell us how many people were going to be there or not.

"To get a Yorkshire derby at Leeds down to around the attendance of around 7,000, with 3,500 being Leeds fans, again goes to show the majority of Sheffield Wednesday fans have just had enough of Dejphon Chansiri and just want him to leave.

"The response from the supporters of other clubs has been both incredibly heartening and also to a certain degree completely unexpected.

"Whether it be Leicester on the opening game of the season who were holding up banners. We were in communication, the supporters trust prior to the game with their supporters groups about that, we managed to coordinate it. Their support was fantastic.

"Whether it be the Wrexham fans and the supporters trust working with us when their club tried to ban our banners from the ground and we got that overturned, then it led to the incredible gesture by Rob McElhenney to donate some of the money from a sale of their black and gold shirts.

"More recently when some fans out of sheer frustration at Dejphon Chansiri and the destruction he's doing to Sheffield Wednesday entered the field to play at one of the recent home games (against Coventry City). Even then the supporters of the opposite team were very much on our side in terms of supporting our frustration and what's happening to us.

"It's really difficult and impossible not to be moved by it.

"Reading have been superb because they've been in touch with us for a number of months now just sharing tips and generally offering advice.

"We've taken to a certain degree a slightly different route from them in that we've really kind of emphasised a bit more of the legal stuff and slightly more of the defunding campaign and a little bit less of some of the matchday protests but it's all part of the same kind of spectrum, really.

"And I've become aware of in the last few days is actually how much the Sheffield Wednesday Supporters Trust is becoming a bit of a trendsetter and a bit of a pioneer really in an upturn in fan activism around the country.

"For example in the last few weeks the Celtic fans have mirrored our late entry protest in protest at their board of directors. More recently West Ham supporters have organised a boycott of their own to a league game in protest at their ownership.

2A lot of the kind of things that we've been doing in the last few months are becoming models for other supporters to have their voices heard around the country as well.

"That's really great to see as well."

He senses victory is close.

"I'm very confident, for two reasons – either in the shorter term financial reality is going to hit, and the economic realities are going to force a change of ownership, most likely through administration.

"Or in the medium term, if he manages to somehow battle on, I believe that the football regulator will have no option but to deal with him as an immediate priority.

"If it's the regulator, I think we're probably looking at the first quarter of next year. There's a chance the economic realities are just going to buy much sooner than that. Either way I think he's gone."

When he is, supporters like Silverwood can get back to being fans again.