Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. You can follow his progress and read every article (so far) here
“I decided in May that I wanted to stay here,” says Danny Rohl, and for half a city those were the only words that they ever wished to hear.
“That was because I felt an energy that we really want to change something important here, that we want to improve and bring lots of things together.
“Then you have to add in the spirit of the supporters, which at times was just unbelievable.”
The first “Danny, Danny Rohl” chant of 2024-25, uttered to the tune of Boney M’s Daddy Cool, comes even before a ball has been kicked. It is an impossibly fine summer’s day at Hillsborough. Stand by the pitch and the blue seats seem to blend perfectly into a cloudless sky.
This is how seasons are supposed to begin: a picture perfect scene, a picture perfect home performance.
The fact that their support might have helped, even a little, is enough to make fans burst.
The same song appears on frequent repeat through the following two hours as Sheffield Wednesday impose their dominance upon a dismal Plymouth Argyle; it follows every goal.
All summer, Wednesday supporters have been desperately attempting to rein in their wild ambitions for fear of cursing it. You try doing that after a 4-0 home win in the sun.
That chant, the manager’s name on a joyful loop, is instructive here. It is the first song played after full-time, before any of the traditional tunes from before Rohl’s appointment. He has been here for 10 months and yet, already, 30,000 people are singing only about him as their first response to success.
Rohl jokes that maybe only Jurgen Klopp got the same treatment so soon after arriving from Germany into English football. They love him here. He loves them too.
“I can’t stop this positive energy from the fans,” Rohl says and laughs.
“After that game against Rotherham, my first match that I won, they were singing my name. It was like a rave! They fell in love with me; I always felt that.
“I see and hear it in the city now when I go through. It’s crazy, sometimes people stop their cars and jump out just to have a photo. Most people just want to say thank you for the things we did. During Christmas party season, I really felt it then too.
“Your aim is always to give them something back, but to have such a connection immediately is really special. And I just want to say thank you to all of them. It keeps a smile on my face.”
This head-over-heels love for Rohl is not hard to explain. Before late-October 2023, Sheffield Wednesday looked to be falling apart. They took three points – all draws – from their first 13 Championship fixtures last season.
The play-off miracle the season before, including overcoming a four-goal deficit in the semi-final and an injury-time, extra-time winner at Wembley, seemed like it had been for nought but eventual misery. What’s worse, Wednesday were getting worse.
They went on a run of six Championship matches without scoring. Darren Moore, who lost his job after League One promotion, had been replaced by Xisco Munoz. Munoz lasted 12 games in charge and failed to win any of them.
Few considered surviving relegation as a viable eventuality. Avoiding the worst of the broken records was the only obvious hope.
After a slow start, Rohl performed the most remarkable job of anyone in English league football in 2023-24. From the beginning of December until the end of the season, only five Championship clubs took more points than supposedly doomed Wednesday. Three of those are now playing in the Premier League and another are title favourites in 2024-25.
“From the moment I arrived here, I was convinced that I could bring something to this club: knowledge, personality, experience at different levels, hopefully success too,” Rohl says.
“When you are inside here, you immediately feel what it means to manage at a Championship club. You feel what it means to be their manager and head coach for the club.
“From the very first game at Watford, I saw only improvements. There was a willingness to follow my lead that I saw straightaway. People always make the mistake of seeing success as a straight line up, but it’s always up and down and we had lots of that.
“That’s when the spirit was its most special. The big last-minute equaliser against Leicester, the last-minute winner against QPR at home.
“We had big setbacks that meant that we had to make those necessary jumps again and again. And then I saw them fighting so hard to get over the line.
“At the end, we wrote our story. We wrote history. Never before has a team taken only six points from their first 17 matches and stayed in the league.”
There were – and, judging on the basis of the opening weekend at Hillsborough, still are – two distinct strategies to Rohl’s great escape.
The first is a commitment to high-intensity, pressing football that he sculpted during years working as an assistant coach at Bayern Munich, RB Leipzig and the Germany national team and was implemented even without a preseason with the squad.
Sheffield Wednesday vs Plymouth Argyle, Sunday 11 August, 4-0
- Game no.: 1/92
- Miles: 120
- Cumulative miles: 120
- Total goals seen: 4
The one thing I’ll remember in May: there’s nothing quite like seeing a big stadium fill up on the first weekend of the season and then explode into noise when the pent-up hope meets the first home goal of the campaign. Nothing beats that roar.
Now after a full summer, that style smacks you in the face.
The energy levels of the Wednesday players without the ball, even in their first competitive fixture and even in temperatures that require drinks breaks in both halves, are astounding.
On the ball, the manner in which they drag opposition players out of position and then switch to quick passing football creates a supreme opening goal. More follow. Wednesday end the game with 30 shots and an expected goals (xG) of 4.5.
This is not, throwing no shade at anyone else in Rohl’s position, what they have been used to at Hillsborough.
“I want to entertain,” Rohl says. “That has to be part of my job.
“I see that football supporters are more engaged when their team is more active on the pitch: high-pressing off the ball and very active with the ball. We conceded goals because we took risks, but that is the process.
“I like this. I like to be active. I like to have the ball.
“I like to press high. I like to play forward. But there always has to be a clear idea – this is why we train at the rate we do.
“I have two goals: I want to win games and I want our supporters to go home saying to each other that they watched a good game and that they love their team playing in this way.”
Perhaps even more than this on-pitch style – although the two clearly exist in symbiosis – it is the togetherness that Rohl quickly instilled that propelled Wednesday out of trouble and may well propel them higher still this season.
He accepts that his football and his training are demanding with its double sessions and three hours straight on the pitch. That requires a physical and emotional investment that cannot be faked.
Rohl uses psychologists and selects coaches with different personality types to give players a wide-range of outlets for advice. He reinforces that it is his responsibility to understand exactly the type of man management that each individual needs, not theirs.
He went out of his way when joining the club to learn about the family situations of every player to understand, for example, if a young child might cause greater fatigue. There are bear hugs after each goal and substitution and after the game.
The players feel it. Barry Bannan and Josh Windass are just two players in this squad who say Rohl is the best coach they have worked with. The aim is to produce a perfect balance.
Rohl is certainly big on data and meticulous with tactical demands, but the emotional connection, with players, supporters and city, is what underpins the rest.
“There’s a slogan from coach John Wooden that I stick to: a good coach can change a game; a great coach can change a life. I’m all about that.
“Sometimes that relationship between manager and players can be hard, because you are making difficult decisions, so you have to build up a relationship with players. My door is always open. This is a necessity: the moment a manager starts to play games with people or is not honest it doesn’t work.
“You need to learn which characters need a little more of a connection, which need more video analysis, some need support from other guys than the manager. You have to create an environment in which all of that is available at all times.
“We want to win. But every player is a human, so part of winning is helping them to deal with disappointment and emotion. I will help them with this.”
Rohl is able to commit himself so fully to this job because he is missing his own family.
Although he decided to stay in Sheffield, signing a new contract in May, his children’s education means that they and his wife are back home in Germany.
They are occasionally able to get over, holidays permitting, but visits back are hard in a relentless 46-game league season.
For a 35-year-old in his first job abroad, that must be mighty difficult. It is some sacrifice.
“We have to find a way to make it work,” he says.
“It enables me to give my full energy to the club, but you have to find a balance between your work and family. My wife helps so much – she is the leader at home. She is the boss
“I think sometimes this is what people don’t see when they look at the football business. I think you just see the success or the defeats, but behind every manager and coach is a family. You live for your work and we enjoy that work, but we invest an awful lot.”
Sheffield Wednesday supporters are investing a lot in return: love, loyalty, adoration, the chant that reverberates around a sell-out home support.
They were crying out for a new hero and they have found one. They know that Rohl’s – and their – progress will be admired from afar if it continues. The manager is suddenly hot property.
But the only real choice is to enjoy this magnificent period for as long as it may extend.
Clubs at the bottom of the Championship have mitigated expectations; hope becomes an ever-decreasing bubble around your good spirit. They do not expect to take a chance on a bright young novice and for everything to click. Why ruin the experience with thoughts of what might end up changing?
“After what we achieved last season, you feel in the city and on social media that the expectations are growing so much higher,” says Rohl towards the end of our interview. “People will always dream for more.”
He’s right in one way – you felt that at Hillsborough on Sunday.
But Rohl is also wrong, if he will allow me to momentarily disagree.
Through the fallow years, the relegation, the two years in League One, they dreamed only of exactly what is happening now.
Rohl is all they ever wanted, an outsider who seemed to understand the very essence of what made them sing and shout and stick with the team, and seemingly had all of the tools to bring it to life.
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