ChapSmurf

Can we have a little bit of perspective here people. The penalty was scored, McNeill gets a hattrick, he might kick on and score a few more goals this season and come May, we are relegated. The penalty was missed. McNeill didn't get a hattrick, the two goals might kick start his season and come May, we are relegated. Calm down, take a breath and enjoy your weekend.

* FFP I mean, not FFS.

I think you might have skipped a few stages to suggest we've a Billionaire owner now in charge. Shall we wait to see how the bidding goes first, then see who the preferred bidder is? I'm sure it will be a Billionaire, but we've not yet crossed that line. As for Q4., there is no FFP as such in L1. It's SCMP (Salary Cost Management Protocol) which restricts player related expenditure to 60% of the previous seasons turnover. Our turnover last season was, I believe, around the £26M mark. If the same this season, and it's likely to be less, then that would equate to around £15.6M on players wages, bonuses and transfers. We might end up with a transfer kitty of around £2 - 3M. On top of this, an owner can inject cash. There is no strict limit on the amount of cash that can be injected, but under the new SCMP rules for next season, only 60% of any cash injected can be used for wages and transfers. So the new owner might put in £10M, giving us an extra £6M on wages and transfers. Or a £100M (I'm sure this amount wouldn't actually be allowed) giving us an extra £60M. Infrastructure, as in all levels of the game, is exempt from any SCMP/FFS/PSR rules.

There might even be a chance of the fee restrictions being lifted in the summer, depending on what the new owners can provide the EFL regarding financial guarantees. Certainly not a given, but it's been discussed.

I think we need to get over this mentality of "we are a big club, therefore we should be doing XYZ". As the old saying goes, it's not about the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. Or to bring it back to topic, the way a club is structured and ran. The size of our home and away following has no relevance to anything other than attendance, right now. It's not a devine right to be pushing our way past other clubs because we are somehow bigger, and therefore better. Coventry, alongside myriad others, have shown how a football club can be successful, if run right. We'll get there eventually, and once we do, then the size of our support could play a key role, financially, to push on to the next stage.

I thought he was still working for Wales, or is he doing both? Thinking about it, I saw him on Sunday. You can't really miss him Anyway, my point still stands. They'd be worse off without Knill.

They aren't the same without Alan Knill rkid. He's the wind in Wilders sails IMHO.

Please see the thread on sentimentality. You're welcome.

I guess depends how you look at it. My personal take is that this is not the fault of the players. We aren't a Norwich City for example, or even a Sheff Utd. Those two teams are where they are due to players simply not performing to the best of their ability. Ours are performing more often than not, it's just not at a level, collectively, that can get us out of a relegation battle. Fans talked about a free hit on Sunday. For me, this season is a free hit. So I'm going to games with almost the attitude of a neutral because I know that better days are most certainly coming.

This post resonates with the song in question. One ear and right out the other one.

I was thinking of taking my son, but I'm concerned it'll all kick off. I'm sure once he turns 6 next month he'll grow out of it

I prefer Sven Väth's Hardy Laurels trance version. Great remix.

It's all the EFL will sanction, possibly due to finances and/or our recent financial position. In fairness, we are lucky to be given 2, even though we need many more.

Brilliant clip. Great to see the lads having some down time, and enjoying themselves. I guess in some respects there is no pressure on any of the squad. They've not created the situation we are all in, they know that and more importantly, they realise we know that too.

I said in another post that the prices would be fair, but these are beyond that. Honestly, I was expecting £100.00 non-members/£80.00 members, trying to strike that balance between the fans and the business. Well done Kris, Julian and Paul (and all others involved at Begbies) for your continued understanding, fairness and communication through this period.

Barry Bannan: I tried to get answers from Chansiri but it was pointless Sheffield Wednesday captain on staying despite big offers ‘from stable clubs’ and interrupting his summer holidays to fight staff’s corner with former chairman Organising a three-way Zoom meeting involving participants in Asia, North America and Europe is the kind of task that is normally undertaken by world leaders or executives from multinational corporations, but Barry Bannan found himself in exactly that position in the summer during a family holiday in Greece. After a chaotic and draining campaign in the Sky Bet Championship Bannan was supposed to be enjoying some downtime with his wife and their two children, but the crisis back home at Sheffield Wednesday was never far from his mind. After being paid late yet again Wednesday staff turned to Bannan, the captain, and long-serving defender Liam Palmer for answers, but they were also in the dark so Bannan sought to arrange a meeting at the end of May with the chairman Dejphon Chansiri, who has since been ousted after putting the club into administration. The only problem was that Chansiri was in Thailand, five hours ahead of Bannan and 12 hours in front of Palmer, who was also on a family holiday in the United States. “Liam was in Disneyland so with the time differences it was difficult because it had to be on the chairman’s time,” Bannan says. “I managed to organise it for about 3pm where I was. “I was fighting for the staff and players, because they wanted questions answered, but it was pointless. Me and Palms have been here long enough to know that we weren’t going to get the answers and we would probably be wasting our holiday time with our families, but you come away still feeling as if you’re letting the rest of the group down, so that was the hardest part in the summer.” For many fans who followed the team during the glory years of the 1990s, David Hirst, Chris Waddle, John Sheridan, Benito Carbone and Paolo Di Canio will be their heroes, but after coming away from our chat with Bannan at the club’s Middlewood Road training ground you can see why many think that the affable Scot deserves to be regarded as one of the greatest players in Wednesday’s history. The 35-year-old from Airdrie has lit up the Hillsborough pitch in the ten years that followed his signing as a free agent from Crystal Palace, and what is more, his work off the pitch — particularly over the past year when staff have not been paid on time and embargoes have been placed on the club — has been invaluable. “He’s the glue that has held everything together,” one senior staff member said. Given the way they treated him in the summer Wednesday are lucky to have Bannan around to lead the fightback in the post-Chansiri reign, which began with a 12-point deduction that rooted the team to the foot of the table, 17 points from safety. Shortly after conducting that Zoom meeting he received a call from the club telling him that, despite playing 3,577 minutes last season, they would not be triggering a one-year extension to his contract and that he would only be offered a much less lucrative deal instead. “They said the manager at the time, Danny [Röhl], had said that maybe I might not play as many games this season but I had already spoken to the manager about this and that wasn’t [true],” Bannan says. “I was like, that doesn’t really add up because last season me and Shea Charles had played the most minutes and I don’t feel as if I’m slowing down, so there’s no evidence to say that I won’t be able to play the same amount of games. “If they just said, ‘Listen, financially, we don’t want to offer you that’, that’s fine. But to say it was down to the amount of minutes I’d play, after I’d just played the most minutes this season, it didn’t really feel true.” Bannan says he received “big offers” from “stable clubs”. He is too polite to reveal their identities, but The Times understands that Middlesbrough and Millwall (second and sixth in the league) offered him three times the wage he is on now, which is said to be around £7,000 a week. After not being paid on time for two months in a row many players and staff ripped up their contracts. Sixteen players left in total, leaving the popular manager Henrik Pedersen with an inexperienced squad lacking quality. Two factors were key to Bannan staying. One was his six-year-old daughter Elsie, a huge Wednesdayite who knows all the fans’ songs, including the one comparing her father to Zinedine Zidane. “She said she would leave school if I left Sheffield Wednesday,” Bannan says. The idea of leaving long-serving staff members, who had been paid late in five of the previous eight months, was unpalatable too, although they would have followed Bannan out of the door, such is his popularity. “I just felt, I couldn’t walk out of the club at this time,” he says. “I might be completely wrong here but I just felt that as people started to go, people were looking at me thinking, if you go, we’re done [too], but I told them I was staying. “It was never a hard decision for me. I would never have been able to live with myself if I’d left. If I was somewhere else now looking at this club and what’s going on, it wouldn’t have sat well with me.” Now Bannan’s phone is buzzing, not with calls from worried staff but from the club’s administrator Kris Wigfield, whose three-man team has managed to reconnect fans with the club. Bannan does not hold a grudge against Chansiri — he brought him to the club and maintained a good relationship with him until recently — but he acknowledges that better times lie ahead. “The staff, the players and supporters can see the light at the end of the tunnel now,” Bannan, who has played 463 times for Wednesday, says. “Obviously, we’ve got a huge task on our hands but we’ve seen at this club that once we’re written off we can produce great things. “It’s not dead and buried yet. We still believe that there’s a lot to get from this season, whether that’s staying up or being close to staying up. Hopefully we can give the fans something to be proud of.” Bannan smiles when it is pointed out to him that it is more than ten years to the day since Wednesday thumped Arsenal 3-0 in the League Cup in front of a packed Hillsborough. It is his dream to see nights like that repeated on a regular basis. Wednesday could have another two sets of points deductions in the post because of Chansiri’s mismanagement, so they are in effect a League One team, but when they do take over, any new regime should be plotting to reach the Premier League, according to Bannan. “When previous owners of football clubs are asked if they could buy a football club now, the majority of them say Sheffield Wednesday,” Bannan says. “The fanbase is there for everybody to see, week in week out, [with] massive numbers, loud, passionate, hard-working people supporting their club. “It’s got the building blocks, it just needs a bit of TLC [tender loving care] and the right people in the right jobs.” Any prospective buyer worth their salt will stick with Pedersen and keep Bannan, who gave interested parties a reminder of his talents on Wednesday when he scored a screamer in the 1-1 draw against Norwich City. “I feel great,” Bannan, who will start his A Licence coaching course in January, says. “I reckon I’ve got two or three seasons left in me so hopefully I’m here for at least a good [period at the] start of the new ownership and beyond that, and when it comes to the day I retire I’d love to always be involved in this club, whether that be in coaching or the academy. “My dream is to become a manager one day and, obviously, the place I’d want to do it is here.”

Fairly, is the only thing I can currently suggest. It's all a bit wierd this Administration situation. I can't recall there being as much information being passed to the fans in any previous, similar, situation at other clubs. Maybe I'm wrong, but what I am certain off is that the Administrators certainly understand us, as fans. Maybe that's down to Kris, maybe it's down to them all, but they are definitely open to trying to generate cash flow, and revive a feel good factor that should have been tapped into long ago. Whatever the price, it will show an empathetic balance between the fans and the business.

I don't know what he's like as a person, or in training, but he certainly seems to have exactly the right attitude needed to make the grade. Combine that with obvious talent, and I am sure he will go far. It can't be easy for a player to be given a choice of youth football, or a volatile club (at the time), facing myriad off-field issues and a certain relegation. And then to decide "you know what, let's take the hard route". He's got his head screwed on and can see the bigger picture. That speaks volumes to me.

I think most of the us knew the chances of avoiding relegation before a ball was kicked, was tiny. We could still do it, but it'd take something absolutely incredible to achieve it - as you pointed out with the rest of your post. But I just wanted to echo the bit above. We must be one of the only teams who've ever existed, and who are facing relegation, to absolutely back and support the team like we are doing. Normally fans would be jumping on the backs of the players, manager and owner at this stage, but we all know the problem was caused entirely by one person. We can walk away after 90+ minutes knowing they gave their all, whether they lose 5-0 or win 1-0. And so did we, as fans. So let's just have a big party on the way down, because trust me, life is too short and too precious to be doing anything else.

It is factual. The 25% rule only applies Sheffield Wednesday football club, not Sheffield 3 Ltd. I can't remember who said what at the Trust meeting, but someone, maybe Kris, said the C. Bomb was owed 25% of his debt in the football club. totalling circa £15M. That would be all he got back, as a maximum. There might even be a case of arguing that figure down, either by the new owner(s), or by them and the Administrators. I believe I have this correct. If not, someone will post saying I haven't I'm sure.

I think Kris and, the Administrators in general, have been nothing short of excellent regarding their communication around the process and progress. Not sure if this is their standard practice, or if it's been relaxed to a point due to Kris being a ST holder and fan, but they are telling us what they can, when they can, and that certainly helps us as fans. I think the odds are well in our favour at this point. If we end up with maybe close to double figures of interested parties, I can't see that ended up below 2 remaining, even after everything has been taken into account with regards the kind of work and finances ultimately required. I think we are in a comfortable position, which isn't normally said when in Administration.

I think Simon Jordan, as he normally does, simply tells it like it is. Due diligence can't always spot every nuance of what is required financially. Anyone who has ever had any work done on their house will know things often creep up that weren't seen or expected, and that add to the overall cost to any new owner. There's a lot to be consider by anyone taking over and some of those who have so far proven funds, may simply say it's too much.

I think he's probably shown that to them already (up and down that left hand side). I think what they are trying to do is give him the education to understand the deeper role behind what appears to be his natural position. The modern game is all about phases of play, and the transition between them. Understanding, and being able to play deeper or more advanced to a "natural" position, is what the game requires. Then positional sense, and awareness, becomes fluid. You can see that in him already. The lads got talent. You can see why he's on the books of his parent club. A full season with us, learning the hard way is not a bad lesson for him, and fair play to Man U., and Amass, for coming. That mindset shows how far he could go, and I sincerely hope he does.

That's Pashun right there. You fill up my sen.......oh, it's a goal for Derby

I think that's a Man Ure decision, rather than one we are taking.