WHEN Middlesbrough beat Ipswich Town on Friday night, they did so in front of an electric atmosphere at a packed Riverside. Tomorrow night, when they return to action at Sheffield Wednesday, things promise to be markedly different.
Hillsborough, one of the great grounds of English football, will be nowhere near full as Sheffield Wednesday supporters vent their fury at the club’s absentee owner, Dejphon Chansiri, who has run the Owls into the ground to the point where administration, or even liquidation, feels like a strong possibility.
The Sheffield Wednesday Supporters’ Trust have been urging fans to stay at home and boycott tomorrow’s game, which is being televised on Sky TV, in the hope that the sight of banks of empty seats will highlight to the nation just how bad things have become.
Boro have taken up their full allocation of almost 3,700 tickets, and it remains to be seen whether that is sufficient to make the travelling contingent the majority on what is set to be an extremely surreal evening.
There is a chance that the Sheffield Wednesday supporters who do attend could look to cause a disruption, as they did in the club’s previous home game against Coventry City, so Rob Edwards has made a point of ensuring his players are ready for whatever eventuality presents itself tomorrow. Expect the unexpected has been the Boro boss’ message.
“We’ve spoken about it with the lads,” said Edwards. “We need to turn up. There will be things going on, external things we can’t control, and we can’t allow that to disrupt or affect us. So, we will expect a little bit of a different atmosphere. We’ve just got to look after ourselves and what we do. That’s all we can do, and the boys know that.
“The lads are understanding of it all. A lot of the lads that are from here know the league and understand a little bit of what is going on at Sheffield Wednesday. I understand maybe for one or two of the new boys, it might have been a bit of a surprise to them when I spoke about it yesterday. We’ve talked about it as we don’t want anything to be a surprise and we can concentrate on what is the most important thing, which is the football.
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“It will be different though. If you think of what we just experienced on Friday night, it was electric. This will be the opposite. So, I think it was right to address it and talk about it, so that no one is surprised about it. We’re going to have to try and create our own atmosphere and our own energy, and that’s what we’ve spoken about.”
As someone who has spent his entire career working in English football, first as a player and then as a manager, Edwards has a great deal of sympathy for Sheffield Wednesday’s plight.
The Owls remain under a transfer embargo, with the current ownership group having missed a succession of deadlines for the payment of players and staff, yet while they might be rooted to the foot of the Championship table, they have still manged to pick up six points from their opening ten games.
“Of course I’ve got sympathy with what’s been going on,” said Edwards. “I don’t know all the details, so I don’t want to comment on that side of it, but it’s a magnificent football club with a huge tradition, massive fanbase, great history and all of that.
“It’s not nice to see. They’re dealing with it, and the supporters as well, in the best way they see. It’s not really for me to comment on the other stuff around it, but it’s a tough situation for them.”
Sheffield Wednesday’s situation means they had to apply for special dispensation to sign a new goalkeeper after Ethan Horvath, who had been deputising for injured number one, Pierce Charles, was sent off in the weekend defeat to Charlton.
The Owls have signed Joe Lumley on a seven-day loan deal, with the former Boro goalkeeper expected to go straight into the Owls’ starting line-up tomorrow.
“We made the lads aware of the situation after Ethan Horvath got sent off,” said Edwards. “They were always going to try and bring someone in on loan because the young lad that they would have brought in [18-year-old Logan Stretch] has not featured before.
“That’s the rules and they can get someone in who has more experience. We know Joe will be a very capable goalkeeper, so that helps them.”
