Sheffield Wednesday have appointed former Owls manager Howard Wilkinson as their new Chairman on an interim basis until August and in an interview on the club’s official website, www.swfc.co.uk he has outlined his priorities for his time in this role.
Wilkinson stated of having two major objectives, centring on assembling a squad capable of challenging for promotion from League One and also continuing to seek financial investment into the club.
Having released six first team players at the end of the 2009/10 season, all of whom were regulars in the match day squad when fit, Wednesday have a great deal of work to do in terms of bringing players in with the aim of achieving promotion back to the Championship at the first time of asking.
Last season the club introduced an early season ticket deadline with the aim of this supposedly to get a good idea of what the budget for the forthcoming season would be. This would then give the Owls a head start on some of their rivals in the transfer market allowing them to make moves for players as early as possible.
To date whilst some clubs have begun to make moves in terms of player recruitment Wednesday have hardly been linked with any players and it is not clear whether manager Alan Irvine is aware as yet of the budget at his disposal.
If this is the case then the club would surely have been better served by extending the season ticket renewal deadline further as this would more than likely have resulted in many more fans purchasing them than have done to date, thus creating a bigger budget to take forward. There is seemingly no point in setting an early renewal cut-off date if it is not going to be utilised for the means that it was designed for.