, OPINION: There’s a rot at the heart at Sheffield Wednesday, what can be done now?

OPINION: There’s a rot at the heart at Sheffield Wednesday, what can be done now?

Sheffield Wednesday fans heading to Griffin Park for their last ever match there will have been reflecting on some of the great memories they have had there on previous trips.

And they will have surprised themselves when they realised that there was a surprising amount of amazing memories there. Back in 2005, a win over Brentford sealed their place in the League One play-off final, one in which they would beat Hartlepool United so that they could return to the Championship. Then in 2012, they would beat Brentford in the penultimate game of the season. This put them into 2nd place in the Championship above Sheffield United and sent them on their way to promotion. Both times, the trip to Griffin Park was their last away day in League One before promotion.

However, Sheffield Wednesday’s send-off at Griffin Park created the exact opposite emotions of those amazing days. In a truly embarrassing result, they fell 5-0 to the Bees. The game was gone in the first half with Brentford achieving over 80% possession and the West London side already 3-0 up. Some Wednesday fans decided that despite the long trip down to the capital, they had seen enough and probably spent some time in one of the famous pubs of Griffin Park trying to drink to forget the memory of this game.

As you would expect in this era of social media, the fans took to Twitter, Facebook, and knowing some of the fan base, TikTok to let their feelings be known. A lot of it was Monk Out, because that is the kneejerk reaction to any poor performance or bad stretch of form.

I don’t think that’s the solution here. The problems that afflict Sheffield Wednesday are not centered on the coaching bench. You could sack Monk, bring someone else in and I believe that in the end, the same issues would hit him that have hit Carvalhal, Luhukay, and Bullen before him. To sack Monk would be to amputate the infected arm long after the infection has spread to the rest of the body. It wouldn’t do a thing to solve the problem.

So what is the problem? Well, let’s look at the two other critical parts which make up Sheffield Wednesday right now, the players and owner Dejphon Chansiri. Firstly, let’s consider the players who are simply not pulling their weight. It’s very easy to see that the majority of the players are just going through the motions and are allowing even the most average Championship team to steamroller them. And it seems like some players are negative influences on the team.

Take Keiren Westwood and Sam Hutchinson for instance. At the moment, they are being frozen out despite on paper, being ideal players to solve some of the problems currently facing the team. Westwood would be a great pair of hands with Cameron Dawson often being frustratingly inconsistent and Hutchinson being the hard worker the team could rally around. But yet they are forced to watch the matches from the stands, and fans often clamour for Monk to put them back in and see their freezing out as a big reason why he should be sacked.

But this has happened before. Both Westwood and Hutchinson were frozen out when Jos Luhukay was manager. At the time, many put this down to Luhukay being a terrible manager and his reputation as a disciplinarian. But when it happens a second time with a manager who is definitely not known a disciplinarian, you have to consider that the problem is with the two players. Obviously it might not be, we don’t know what happens in the training ground and why both Luhukay and Monk have decided that they are better off with Westwood and Hutchinson out of the picture. Maybe they have both got unlucky with power-mad managers. But a coincidence is starting to become a trend which is alarming.

But it hasn’t mattered about the manager. Ever since the waning days of the Carvalhal reign, the club has been afflicted with a lack of work rate from the players. It seems like while every new manager gets a form boost in their honeymoon period, things soon go off the rails and then we end up in the same place, sacking the manager and getting the new guy in who makes lots of promises. Of course, Steve Bruce is the exception but he was barely around, this could easily have happened when he had his season proper. This complaint has been around for years, usually compounded by the fact they are earning a lot of money.

This suggests that the main issue is in the players, whether it is the obvious issues that have surrounded Westwood and Hutchinson or the general malaise of the squad over the years. This suggests that with or without Monk, a huge overhaul is needed. Wednesday have pulled this off in the past. After their first division in Division Two where they almost got relegated for the second season in a row, Chris Turner ripped the squad apart. He got rid of big earners and quality on paper guys such as Alan Quinn and Terry Cooke, replacing them with other players who got them promoted, albeit with a different manager.

That means the recruitment would have to be on point, which it mostly was that year. That brings us to Dejphon Chansiri, who definitely has a lot of questions to answer. Which he probably would in one of those epically long fans forums which go on until 1am if people didn’t keep repeating questions about the price of pies in the Kop. No matter what happens in the well-publicised row with the EFL, it is down to some woeful management from the top. Chansiri spent way too much in the early days seemingly not knowing the Financial Fair Play rules and has tried for the last few years to tidy up it up. That is down to him.

But Chansiri was just following something that many teams, including Wolves, have done because of the terrible loophole that you can avoid being punished as long as you get promoted. That’s like being allowed to steal the Mona Lisa as long as you can get out of the Louvre. But the reason Wolves are in the Premier League and Sheffield Wednesday could face a points deduction is because of recruitment. The only players signed in the 2015/16 season which had the initial investment and play-off final appearance are Fernando Forestieri and Barry Bannan. For 2016/17, add Adam Reach, Jordan Rhodes, Morgan Fox, Sam Winnall and Steven Fletcher. For all the money spent, Transfermarkt says it was over £23m, a grand total of seven players. That’s scandalously bad and the reason Wednesday have been so poor recently.

In fairness, things have improved this season. Chansiri’s ego, which is rather large if his forum and press appearances are anything to go by, was defeated by Steve Bruce who got control of recruitment and that carried onto both Bullen and Monk. This hasn’t been perfect, hello Moses Odubajo, but it has led to the signings of Julian Borner and Kadeem Harris. So there is hope on the recruitment front.

But even if Wednesday do somehow get away with no major repercussions for the sale of Hillsborough, can the fans trust Chansiri again? This potential points deduction has been a toxic cloud hanging over Hillsborough this season and you can’t dismiss it as one of the reasons the players have been so languid this season. I mean, how hard would you work if it was all going to get wiped out by April by things out of your control? But considering it was down to Chansiri’s management the club are in this situation, can he be trusted to run a huge recruitment drive? The recruitment drive needed to get this team going again will cost money and it will need to be smartly run to avoid attracting the ire of FFP and right now, Chansiri doesn’t seem like the man to do it. Obviously he could hire someone to do that instead but considering the high turnover rate of his staff which has included Glenn Roeder and Katrien Meire over the years, that’s not a doable solution.

But Chansiri is the one thing that cannot be solved in the short term, until the EFL situation has been resolved no one is buying Sheffield Wednesday. And I doubt he’ll sell at a loss which I think he would have to do at this point. Obviously Monk could go and even though it wouldn’t be an instant solution like some think it is, there has been plenty of fair criticism over his tactical choices in the last few weeks. But the most critical thing is a revolution of the players. Free up that wage bill by releasing pretty much everyone whose contract set to expire. Out of this list, the only players I’d argue keeping are Steven Fletcher, Morgan Fox and Cameron Dawson. And I bet I could find some of that’d argue the last two should go too.

Then see what you could get rid of the players who are contracted. Players like Tom Lees and Adam Reach who have been nothing but underwhelming this season. Rip the core out of this team because it is absolutely rotten at this moment. There are very few people who deserve to stay in this team right now and anyone off the wage bill would be good news.

Obviously the recruitment would need to be far better. While there has been a huge improvement this season, there have been misfires which I don’t think the team could afford. But if we could get rid of some of the players doing very little for a lot of money, hopefully a better team could be produced next season so that when Wednesday visit Brentford’s new ground for the first time ever, new memories can be formed in that patch of West London where so many great ones have been made in the past.

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