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.
Following a summer of discontent, Sheffield Wednesday fans planned a large demonstration against Dejphon Chansiri for the club’s first home game of the season.
Granted, the official attendance was smaller than a typical opening day match, with just over 21,000 supporters watching the Potters defeat Henrik Pedersen’s makeshift team 3-0.
Sheffield Wednesday received a’stark lesson’ that they cannot rely solely on effort and enthusiasm to succeed. However, with no indication of improvement on the pitch, the finger of blame can only point to one man, and the chairman may have escaped with little damage to his reputation this weekend.
Rob Staton baffled by tame Sheffield Wednesday protest
While a large crowd gathered in Hillsborough Park before the game to have a symbolic burial to protest Chansiri, which Football Heaven broadcaster Rob Staton commended, the analyst couldn’t help but question why more fans were not present.
He stated, “I believe there may have been more than one winner this weekend at Hillsborough.” Not only did Stoke win, but I believe Dejphon Chansiri also did.
“The Trust arranged the outside protests quite nicely. They were peaceful and organized. I don’t think that should be overlooked. It is difficult to gather individuals together in an orderly manner. Clive Betts MP offered a passionate speech, and the sight of fans marching around Hillsborough Park was pretty moving.
“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?'”
Staton discovered that a significant proportion of fans did not participate in the demonstration. While it is understandable that Sheffield Wednesday cannot protest every week, it was assumed that the initial outpouring of resistance to Chansiri would have had a greater impact.
He continued, “The official attendance was somewhere about 21,600. Let’s imagine there were around 3,000 Stoke fans. Let us guess that there were approximately 1,500 fans in the park. That means approximately 17,000 supporters who attended the game did not participate in the protest.
“When you went into the ground, the whistle protest occurred. I don’t think it had a big influence. It doesn’t help that Stoke scored in the first minute. After the whistling had stopped, there was hardly a chant of rage at the owner; a couple of strangled chants, but that was it.
“After all that has transpired this summer, I was expecting to go to Hillsborough and feel a lot more. Everything we’ve discussed, the fury and emotion that we’ve heard on the show and seen online… If you didn’t know what occurred over the summer and went to that game, it would have seemed like any other.”
Sheffield Wednesday fans have a plan for Leeds United cup clash
The next game at Hillsborough will be a Carabao Cup match against Yorkshire rivals Leeds United in a week.
Leeds fans are already sympathetic to Wednesday’s troubles, despite their rivalry, and are likely to attend the game as usual.
Given that this is a cup game, there is hope and confidence that fewer Owls fans will attend. Many have chosen to donate the ticket amount to charity instead, while others have just stayed absent.
The game versus Stoke was supposed to be a loud and visible demonstration of rage, but it fell short. Sheffield Wednesday fans now want to express their displeasure by refusing to attend games.
We’ll have to wait and see how many people follow through on it, but hopefully, after the Leeds game, Chansiri will finally get the message that enough is enough.
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