The more you learn about Dejphon Chansiri the more you realise Sheffield Wednesday’s owner is one of football’s quirkier characters.
Plot his history in English football and you discover an eccentricity that perhaps goes some way to explaining the extraordinary request he made in October for fans to contribute £100 each to help pay wages and an unpaid tax bill.
It can be entertaining for outsiders, a source of banter for rival fans, yet for those who have supported Sheffield Wednesday for all their lives, Chansiri’s actions and the resulting decline has left fans fearing for the club’s future to such an extent they have set up GoFundMe pages to raise money for wages. Chansiri eventually paid them last month but supporters are sourcing an emergency fund in the event of the worst.
To those who have followed Chansiri closely, asking 20,000 fans to chip in to support the club via an interview with The Sheffield Star newspaper was a perhaps not so unpredictable nadir after eight years spent throwing money at Premier League promotion attempts, breaching financial regulations, incurring points deductions and transfer embargoes.
It has all led to an uncertain future for a club with such a rich past, one that was a mainstay in the top flight for half a century until they were relegated from the Premier League in 2000, and sparked a civil war between the owner and the fanbase.
What Chansiri has presided over at Sheffield Wednesday seems unexpected for the son of Kraisorn Chansiri, founder of the multi-billion-pound Thai Union Group – the world’s biggest canned tuna producer – and the company’s chair until last year (2022) when he resigned after being fined for insider trading. (If you have ever bought a tin of John West tuna you have indirectly contributed towards some of the vast millions Chansiri has poured into Sheffield Wednesday since he bought the club in 2015.)
Chansiri’s begging bowl approach came only a month after he had published a stunning 1,464-word statement on the club’s website, laying into supporters for not spending enough money and claiming costs for tickets and replica shirts were high because not enough fans bought them.
“From now, I will not put additional money into the club,” he warned. “If you say you are the owner and I am the custodian, then show me how to be the good owner and help save your club. You want me to leave but you want me to spend money? If you want me to leave, then show me how to run the club and invest the money before I do that.
“You have no right to ask me to leave. 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. 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. This is not acceptable and as a result I am not willing to inject more money while I am being treated unfairly by those fans.”
It appears as though the outburst came as a result of the emergence of an organised fan protest movement and attacks on his family.
“I have always welcomed constructive debate and thought, which is fine, but to the people who have contacted me directly with insults, and to my family, I can tell you that I will never accept this,” he wrote.
i was told that fans have posted abusive messages on his son Att’s Instagram account and that Chansiri has been subjected to racism. Indeed, in September one fan was handed a three-year football ban for posting a “vile comment” directed at Chansiri “which contained racial slurs and offensive language”, North Wales police said.
Inspired by the campaigning and protests of other clubs’ fans – including Reading’s Sell Before We Dai protest group – a small band of Sheffield Wednesday fans formed the 1867 Group – named after the club’s founding year and as a nod to Chansiri’s most madcap scheme.
With Wednesday struggling under the weight of the heavy spending of his first three years in charge, the Thai businessman came up with the idea of selling membership to the exclusive Club 1867 – a pricey scheme that came with a number of perks.
It included having your name listed in a “limited-edition pictorial history book by club photographer Steve Ellis charting his 45 years of shooting the Owls” and another “fantastic bonus” of a free season ticket if the club were promoted to the Premier League, up to a total of five, depending how many years a member had paid for.
Prices ranged from £255 for one year for over 65s in the Kop, up to a staggering £3,200 for five years for an adult in the South Stand. Members also got a percentage discount on season tickets in the Championship.
If it sounds confusing, you’re not alone in thinking that.
For a start, fans weren’t really getting a free season ticket in the Premier League, more paying Premier League prices for the prospect of a season ticket in the top flight. Since then, they have been relegated to League One, promoted back to the Championship, where they are currently bottom of the table, and the club is in turmoil.
What was guaranteed, however, was that a member’s name would appear in that exclusive tome not available for general sale. Only, like Premier League football, that never materialised. The scheme, launched in 2018, was discontinued after a few years and supporters are yet to receive a copy.
So, what began as three fans in a WhatsApp group has turned into a large organisation sharing skills and expertise. A game against Middlesbrough was halted after tennis balls were hurled on to the pitch, a banner was draped over a Hillsborough entrance declaring, “Dejphon Chansiri. Not fit or proper. Sell the club”, ahead of the recent visit of Millwall. People are taking notice of their plight. Talks are taking place between the 1867 Group and local authorities about staging a protest march at a future home game.
As an idea of the feeling towards Chansiri, members of the 1867 Group asked to remain anonymous, concerned they will be banned from attending games if identified. Perhaps understandable, considering the rather ominous line in Chansiri’s diatribe that “the people who are trying to organise these protests are not prepared to identify themselves”.
Ian Bennett, chair of the Sheffield Wednesday Supporters’ Trust, believes attacks on the financial contribution of fans reveals a distinct lack of awareness for the area.
“It shows he doesn’t understand football and it shows he doesn’t understand the economy up here either,” Bennett says. “People have to work hard for their money and every penny is hard-earned. Disposable income is at a minimum.”
Bennett draws on personal experience to explain why the suggestion fans don’t put enough money into the club is so misguided. Bennett’s father and grandfather were original Sheffield Wednesday shareholders and when Bennett was a child in the 1970s he was bought some shares when the club needed to raise funds to survive.
“It was nicknamed Save Our Owls, the club was absolutely on its knees,” Bennett says. “When Milan Mandaric took over he asked us to give up all our original shares for free, which we did. I had four of them, which at one point were probably worth 25-grand between them. We gave that up willingly to save the club.
“Now Chansiri says we haven’t put enough money in. I’ve been a season ticket holder since 1969. I travel home and away everywhere, so if I haven’t put enough money in the club I don’t know who has.
“If you see the crowds at Hillsborough there should never be any financial problems.”
Sheffield Wednesday have averaged 26,000 fans at home games this season – more than Crystal Palace and Fulham in the Premier League.
Bennett adds: “Mr Chansiri has put probably upwards of £150m into the club, which is a massive investment. But it’s how he’s done it and the lack of communication I personally disagree with. The divide and conquer mentality.”
It seems to be the underlying sentiment for many fans: that they cannot knock Chansiri for the money he has invested into the club, it is really the way he has done it – for many years listed as the club’s sole director – and the way he has reacted since things turned bad.
“The bad’s outweighed the good massively,” one the 1867 Club campaigner says.
Chansiri declined the offer of an interview with i and neither he nor the club wished to comment on any of the claims made here.
The owner established a supporters’ engagement panel in 2021 to improve relations, but Bennett says anything critical of the owner is given short shrift and that the former Supporters’ Trust chair resigned from his position after his treatment.
“He had a massive fallout with one of the members of the engagement panel and they excluded him from it,” Bennett says. “He resigned in disgust.”
It was claimed to i that the Supporters’ Trust was excluded from the supporters’ engagement panel for breaching the group’s terms by publicising information from meetings before minutes were signed off by members.
A statement published in the group’s first publicised minutes includes an apology from the Trust “for the difficulties caused. The Trust fully acknowledges and accepts that the club, and some members of the panel, may believe that some of the Trust update was inaccurate.”
It adds: “It is unfortunate that there were some missteps in communications between the Trust and the engagement panel/club following the introductory gathering of the engagement panel on 23 January 2021, the Trust accepts it bears a part of the responsibility for that and apologises to the club and the other panel members.”
It all points to a chaotic start to an initiative that was intended to improve relations between the owner and the supporters only to alienate the Supporters’ Trust at its inception.
Indeed, in the minutes from the October meeting it states that members of the panel, made of various representatives from supporter groups, “requested confirmation they were permitted to present ‘difficult’ questions” and that Chansiri “confirmed there were no issues with any questions, on or off the agenda”, promising “he would give as much information as possible in the interests of transparency”.
Delve into the club’s accounts over the past decade and they paint a remarkable picture of the Chansiri era and how it has come to supporters fearing the consequences of criticising the owner. Previous owner Mandaric “operated a tight ship”, says football finance expert Kieran Maguire. Losses after tax in the three years before Chansiri took over were around £4m per year – relatively modest for the Championship a decade ago.
But in came Chansiri and losses doubled in the space of a year, from £4.5m to £9.8m, doubled again to £20.8m then leapt to £35.5m, representing a staggering 859 per cent increase in post-tax losses in the space of six years.
Much of that went on player wages. From around £6,000 per week on all employee wages from 2013 to 2015, then up to £8,967 and by 2018 nearly £17,000 – almost triple.
“The average weekly wage is testament to the Chansiri years,” Maguire explains. “Chansiri came in, thinks if I double the wage bill we’ll get promoted. That didn’t work in three years, all of a sudden he had to slam the brakes on.”
There were brief signs it might work – sixth in his first full season, fourth in the next. But football is as unforgiving as the Championship is unpredictable.
As financial restrictions started to bite, Sheffield Wednesday slid down the table until a devastating relegation in 2021. Their points total included a six-point deduction for breaching EFL spending rules. Had they not had the deduction, they would have stayed up.
Chansiri had tried to mastermind his way out of financial breaches. EFL clubs are allowed to lose £39m over a three-year period, but having racked up a loss of £30.6m in the 2016 and 2017 accounts and with spending spiralling, Chansiri exploited a loophole, created when the EFL changed its financial rules but since closed, to sell the club’s stadium, Hillsborough, to himself.
Initially, it had appeared to keep the club within spending limits. Until the EFL pointed out he hadn’t managed to sell the stadium to himself within the timeframe. Instead, a loss of £35.5m showed up on the 2018 accounts – totalling £66.1m for the three-year period.
“They tried to sneak it into 2018 accounts,” Maguire explains. “The EFL then said ‘you’ve not actually sold it’. They’ve got it in both sets of accounts. They put it first of all in the 2018 accounts, and then they were subject to a charge by the EFL. Cock-up more than conspiracy would be my description.”
The club were initially docked 12 points but it was halved on appeal, an independent commission deciding that the fact Chansiri had only just missed the deadline should have been a mitigating factor. Regardless, the six-point deduction sent them down.
“Effectively what he tried to do was spend a load of money, get them promoted and then worry about it when they got to the Premier League,” Maguire says.
But while Chansiri tried to slam on the brakes when that failed, halting the repercussions proved impossible.
The Supporters’ Trust is now working with the Football Supporters’ Association and attempting to unite the various fan factions to create a united front. One member of the 1867 Group believes while the fans were patient for many years, around 90 per cent no longer support Chansiri and there are genuine worries about the club’s future. “We’re always constantly thinking whether we are going to have a club this time next season,” the campaigner said.
The Supporters’ Trust has even started putting together an “emergency finance package” – bringing together high net worth fans and others potentially interested – in case the club is placed into administration, even though in the latest accounts Chansiri has stated his commitment to keep funding Wednesday until the end of the season.
“We’re never going to afford to buy him out but we can put plans in place,” Bennett says.
It feels inevitable that Chansiri will have to sell, but whether he can find a buyer willing to hand over anywhere near the money he has put into the club remains to be seen. Until then, Sheffield Wednesday’s troubles look set to continue.
“I feel deflated,” one member of the 1867 Group says. “I get up on match day and don’t have that same buzz or excitement to go to a game. That’s simply down to the chairman. Instead of moving forward we’re always being dragged back by the owner.”
Sheffield Wednesday have one win in 16 league games and are bottom of the table. Two days after that solitary victory, against Rotherham United, Chansiri made the bizarre request for a 20,000-fan whip-round.
“Every time it looks like something positive is going on at the club the chairman releases a bizarre statement or does something that sets us six steps back,” the campaigner adds.
“This season we’ve had more statements from Chansiri than we’ve had wins.”
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