Sheffield Wednesday owner Dejphon Chansiri is no stranger to sending long, rambling missives for staff to post on the official club website but even by his standards, this one was incendiary.
The key takeaway is that he will not put any further money into the club after taking umbrage against protests aimed at his stewardship of the Owls. But there is clearly a lot more going on here.
The statement opens with the phrase “Dear Sheffield Wednesday fans” but reads like he regards them as anything but.
“I am the one who saved the club and spent the money for the club, I am the one who needs to pay around £2m on average every month,” he says.
“Some fans need to have more respect for owners of clubs and not be so selfish, thinking of their own benefit without doing anything good to the club.
“Those fans who create trouble to the club and myself and believe that they are the real owner of the club need to be responsible for the financial matters of the club from now on.”
It is the latest skirmish after a summer of discontent at Hillsborough that has cast a long shadow over their miraculous promotion from League One last season. That heady evening in May when they overturned a 4-0 first leg deficit to beat Peterborough in front of an ecstatic, unbelieving home support is now firmly in the past.
First there was the departure of Darren Moore, an exit that was drenched in acrimony amid claims and counter claims about his contract demands. Chansiri promised a fans forum that they would not have to Google the name of his replacement and eventually alighted on Xisco Munoz, the former Watford manager fresh from a spell in Cyprus with Anorthosis.
The Spaniard has made an inauspicious start, the club bottom of the table and winless ahead of Friday night’s visit of Sunderland. But it is the club’s decision to jack up ticket prices – devising a complex system that fans believe will grade prices depending on how well the team is doing – that proved the final straw for many supporters. The most expensive seat in Category A is a breathtaking £59.
A newly-formed fan collective – the 1867 Group – has led calls for change and a tennis ball protest during a recent home game against Middlesbrough is understood to have stoked Chansiri’s ire and led to his decision to refuse to pump any more money into the Owls.
“Potentially catastrophic for the club” is how Ash Rogers, host of popular Owls podcast The Wednesday Week, views that call. “100 per cent I am worried about what comes next,” he adds.
With little clarity over what precisely Chansiri means by refusing to put any additional funding into the club, supporters are obviously concerned about the future.
The £2m a month that the owner claims is required to prop up the club is, Rogers says, down to Chansiri’s own mismanagement.
“It feels a bit like blackmail. That’s a hard thing to say but that’s how it feels to us,” he tells i.
“Abuse of his family or him personally is wrong, it’s out of order. That’s probably the only thing in the statement that all supporters will agree on.
“I’m sure there is debt there but it’s not like he has been there a year or 18 months, he has been owner for eight years. There’s a reason he is putting £2m in and it’s not because fans haven’t turned up, bought shirts and whatever.”
Wednesday’s predicament is that Chansiri continues to hold their fate in his hands. Currently in Thailand and half the world away from what is going on in South Yorkshire, it appears as if the fissures between fanbase and ownership will only grow.
It is just a few weeks since Chris Waddle told i he was staggered no mega rich owner had “done a Newcastle” and eyed up Wednesday’s potential but alternatives appear thin on the ground.
A US-based Owls fan, Adam Shaw, pulled together a consortium that he said wanted to buy the club but Chansiri’s statement said he had not been shown proof of funds.
“If anyone wants to buy the club, they should act professionally and follow the correct process,” he said.
Now there are fears that the situation will get worse. A call from influential midfielder Barry Bannan for unity between fans and players came 24 hours before Chansiri’s statement kicked up a hornet’s nest.
“What with the results on the field, dissatisfaction with the manager, ticket prices, it’s just a melting pot of everything that could go wrong, is going wrong,” Rogers says.
“And then the owner has just gone ‘I’m going to turn the heat up a bit more’ by releasing these statements.”
Rogers thinks putting “football people” in key positions and setting up a structure at the club would help heal some of the scars. A regular line of communication from owner to supporter groups is clearly required rather than ad hoc, risible statements.
But requests from local media to speak to Chansiri, who is currently in Thailand, have gone unfulfilled by the club and further protests are planned.
The stark truth is it feels like a long battle for the soul of Sheffield Wednesday is only just beginning.
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