Dejphon Chansiri is the ‘winner’ of Sheffield Wednesday protest as pundit asks ‘where is everybody?’
Sheffield Wednesday fans staged a protest before and during their latest game against Stoke City over the weekend, but it simply wasn’t powerful enough.
After a summer of discontent, Sheffield Wednesday supporters planned to carry out a mass protest against Dejphon Chansiri for the first home game of the new season.
Granted, the official attendance for the clash was lower than a normal opening day fixture, with just over 21,000 fans turning out to see the Potters trounce Henrik Pedersen’s makeshift side 3-0.
It was a ‘stark reminder’ for Sheffield Wednesday that the team cannot get by on pure determination and spirit alone. But, with no sign of things improving on the pitch, the finger of blame can only point at one man, and yet the chairman may well have gotten away without much damage to his reputation this weekend.
The Sheffield Wednesday club crest outside the Hillsborough Stadium
While a swell of supporters gathered in Hillsborough Park before the game to carry out a symbolic funeral to protest Chansiri, which Football Heaven presenter Rob Staton praised, the pundit also couldn’t help but wonder why there were not more fans involved.
He said: “I think there may have been more than one winner this weekend at Hillsborough. Not just Stoke, but also I think maybe Dejphon Chansiri was a winner as well.
“The protests outside of the ground were very well organised by the Trust. They were peaceful, they were organised. I don’t think that should be underestimated. It’s difficult to bring people together in an orderly fashion. Clive Betts MP delivered a passionate speech, and the sight of fans marching across Hillsborough Park was quite impactful.
“But I was speaking to a number of fans at that protest and they kept coming up to me and saying: ‘Where is everybody else?’”
Digging into the numbers, Staton recognised that a large portion of fans didn’t take part in the protest. While it’s obviously expected that Sheffield Wednesday can’t protest every week, it was assumed that this initial show of opposition to Chansiri would have had more of an impact.
He added: “The official attendance was something like 21,600. Let’s say there was roughly 3,000 Stoke fans. Let’s estimate there was about 1,500 fans in the park. That means there’s around 17,000 fans who attended that game who did not take part in the protest.
“When you went into the ground and the whistle protest happened. I don’t think it had much impact. That’s not helped by the fact Stoke scored within the first minute. And then once the whistling had finished there was barely a chant in anger at the owner; a couple of strangled chants but that was it.
“After everything that’s happened this summer, I was expecting to go to Hillsborough and feel a lot more than that. Everything we’ve talked about, the anger and the emotion that we’ve heard on this show and that I’ve read online… if you didn’t know what happened this summer and went to that game, it just felt like any other game.”
Sheffield Wednesday fans have a plan for Leeds United cup clash
The next game at Hillsborough will be a Carabao Cup clash with Yorkshire rivals Leeds United in a week’s time.
Leeds fans are already relatively sympathetic to Wednesday’s struggles, despite the rivalry, but are still expected to attend the game as normal.
Given this is a cup game, though, there is a hope and a belief that there will be far fewer Owls fans attending. Many have decided to donate the ticket price to a charity instead, while others are simply staying away.
The game against Stoke was supposed to be a very vocal and prominent display of anger, but failed. Now, Sheffield Wednesday fans intend to show how they feel by not turning up to the ground at all.
We’ll have to wait and see how many follow through with that, but hopefully, after the Leeds game, Chansiri finally gets the signal he needs that enough is truly enough.
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