Garry Monk has got a lot of problems to solve at Sheffield Wednesday this summer, a lot of which he can blame on Dejphon Chansiri. The Owls owner has allowed eight first-team players’ contracts to run down, so Wednesday won’t be making much money from departures.
It means Monk could have a large player turnover on his hands without the transfer budget available to sign his preferred targets – the third consecutive summer that Wednesday will have to shop in the bargain bucket. So why has Chansiri dropped the ball on contracts again?
As things stand, Morgan Fox, Kieran Lee, Joey Pelupessy, Sam Hutchinson, Sam Winnall, Atdhe Nuhiu, Fernando Forestieri and Steven Fletcher will be free transfers in a matter of months if Wednesday can’t tie them down to contract extensions.
As per Transfermarkt, the eight players collectively made 195 appearances and racked up 12,195 minutes of playing time before the season was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, so Monk risks losing a core group of first-teamers.
Not only has Chansiri been sleeping on contracts, he’s failed to get maximum value from players who have been sold in recent years. Nancy Frostick of The Athletic wrote that Wednesday had made the second-least amount of many from sales (£8m approx.) in the last five Championship seasons.
- 2019/20: Lucas Joao (£4.8m to Reading)
- 2018/19: Jack Hunt (£1.53m to Bristol City)
- 2015/16: Rhoys Wiggins (£0.23m to Bournemouth)
- 2015/16: Stevie May (£0.99m to Preston North End)
Wednesday nearly breached Financial Fair Play regulations after overspending on players (£9.81m in 2016/17 and £13.68m in 2017/18) and reporting debt in consecutive seasons, so they now have to sign loan players and free transfers to build a squad.
Monk could have an exodus to deal with this summer without a penny to fix it and he’d be right to blame Chansiri for this mess.
