Sheffield Wednesday have had a terrible start to the new season. Photo: Avalon/Imago
Balloons will be released in 2020. Hillsborough are in for the Friday night game, but it won't be a celebration. As Sky Sports cameras broadcast, Sheffield Wednesday fans are planning a protest to demonstrate their discontent with one of the most dramatic changes in football history over the past four months.
Having won the hearts of the neutrals with a 4-0 defeat at Peterborough United and winning the League One play-offs, they found themselves in crisis once again. No wins this season, loss of confidence in the new coach and owner, from whom the fans want to leave. The balloons released for the Sunderland game will be black, symbolizing the club's predicament under its current management.
Deifon Chansiri, the Thai businessman whose wealth came from tuna, was in the dressing room after the famous win over Peterborough that captured the imagination of fans who witnessed the impossible. And it is on his decisions that the club's fortunes seem to be swinging wildly.
Fans, upset by high ticket prices, want Chansiri to leave, but the situation has reached a dead end. Chansiri refuses to invest more money into the club after what he considers to be unfair treatment during a period in which the club was turned on its head.
Sheffield Wednesday pulled off a remarkable turnaround to beat Peterborough. Photo: Getty Images/Matt McNulty
A few weeks after promotion to the Championship, Darren Moore left the club. The mastermind behind their famous comeback and the man who changed the club's culture is gone. Chansiri says Moore asked for a new contract worth four times his existing terms. Telegraph Sport understands Moore was prepared to negotiate, although this was not allowed. Moore left and last week, inevitably, took his first available Championship job of the season at Huddersfield Town.
Moore's work at Hillsborough cannot be underestimated. He showed up and saw the quarrels between the players on the training ground, and gradually (from a football management perspective) he managed to get the players moving in the same direction. “Within this circle there is trust, humility, honesty, hard work. You can get out of it, but you will stick out like a sore thumb,” he told them.
Part of Moore's modus operandi was to keep lines of communication open with Chansiri. They talked often. Sometimes their calls were daily. Moore was happy to be the club's voice, speaking to the media in the days when winning became a habit. In the final week of 2022, Moore's side were on pace to score the most points by any professional club in that calendar year.
They have overcome transfer embargoes, points deductions and a shabby squad to look like a club on the mend again. Their 96 points that year were earned brilliantly, with Moore's attacking football contrasting with his style of play as a serious centre-back.
Darren Moore led Sheffield Wednesday to the title. . . but he's in Huddersfield now. Photo: Getty Images/Serena Taylor 
Fans blame owner Deiphon Chansiri for the club's plight. Photo: PA/Martin Rickett
It is a sign of the man that some at the club felt that he knew the end of his final days was approaching, but continued to work, trying to prepare for the next season and secure the future of existing players or recruit new ones to improve the team. . Until his last day, he received calls from agents. Then in the early evening, on the last day of the football season, when England played North Macedonia, it was announced that he had left.
Without the man who changed the club's fortunes, there will inevitably be a period of uncertainty. Unfortunately for Chansiri, this period came as the club returned to one of the most competitive leagues in the world. Two months after their return to the Championship, they are still waiting for their first victory.
Chansiri considered many candidates. One of the interesting coaches on his radar was Danny Röhl, who was then assistant coach of the German national team and had previously held second position at Bayern Munich, RB Leipzig and Southampton. At that time, Röhl was concentrating on his role in the national team, but, most likely, in the future he will be ready to work in England.
Slaven Bilic gave an interview, but the pairing of club and coach did not match. Former Southampton manager Nathan Jones was in the spotlight, as was Dean Smith after his short spell at Leicester City. Ultimately, Chansiri chose Spanish coach Xisco Muñoz, who spent 10 months at Watford. His previous assignment was to the Cypriot club Anorthosis Famagusta.
Xisco Muñoz's Sheffield Wednesday are bottom and winless in the competition. eight league games this season. Photo: Getty Images/George Wood
Fans attacked Munoz last week against Swansea as their winless streak continued. “When I arrived we had [only] 10 players and we signed 10 new players,” he insisted during an interview with BBC Radio Sheffield. “We have made progress.”
But some decisions were strange. The Spaniard did not select Marvin Johnson or Reece James in his matchday squads, missing out on two important members of the promotion group and giving no explanation as to why. Johnson's situation now sees the Professional Footballers' Association union intervene to try to find a solution.
Derby County were interested in a deadline day deal for Johnson that would have seen one of Wednesday's best players sacked. wage bill, but the move was reversed due to loan fees, leaving Johnson frozen out.
Fans blame Chansiri for the club's plight. The 1867 group is a group of Sreda fans who are organizing a protest using black balloons. They threw tennis balls onto the pitch against Middlesbrough and this is their next step in trying to force Chansiri to leave. It seems that the exultation of last season is still a long way off, even though it was only four months ago.
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