The last match between the two Sheffield clubs came in March 2019 and resulted in a goalless draw – the third scoreless affair between the two sides on the spin. It means that by the time the Remembrance Day clash between Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United will come some 2,078 days will have passed. It’ll be quite the event.
The November international break falls directly after the Derby, meaning the victors will swagger off into a fortnight of adulation and good feeling. For the losers, there’ll no doubt be two weeks of headache before the chance to right wrongs comes around.
But there are a swarm of matches to come and Wednesday will play for no fewer than 15 Championship points before the big one comes around. There’s also the small matter of Premier League opposition and a Carabao Cup round of 16 clash to consider.
When is the Sheffield Derby?
What have Wednesday got to contend with before that?
A fair bit. The Owls will take in seven matches in the 22 days leading up to the Derby, including two long-distance away days in the space of four days thanks to trips to Portsmouth and Brentford on October 25 and 29.
Wednesday’s continued involvement in the Carabao Cup means they’ll face one match more in the build-up than their United counterparts, who were knocked out in the second round by Barnsley. They do, however, face a long midweek trip to Bristol City the Tuesday before their Wednesday clash, where the Owls welcome Norwich City to Hillsborough.
The build-up to the Derby is kind on Wednesday in terms of miles travelled. Their schedule the week after next will take in a 460-mile round trip to Fratton Park and then a 340-mile round trip to the Brentford Community Stadium, meaning they face a total away travel of 800 miles – though they’ll have faced the logistics and energy of an away day for 12 days.
United on the other hand face four away days in their next five matches and in facing Leeds United, Middlesbrough, Blackburn Rovers and Bristol City, they’ll rack up 765 miles total in this manic next run of games. With travel days and overnight stays to contend with in that, they’ll have fewer days of pure match preparation time than their S6 rivals.
What’s Danny Röhl said about how they’ll tackle it?
He’s done little moaning. The nature of a Championship fixtures schedule is what it is, he says, and it’s something that must be overcome. The full breadth of his squad is on standby for involvement in the next pod of matches.
He said recently: “This is the Championship, it is a part of our job, but it is what we have to improve. It is really interesting that we have this away, away in a row but this is the schedule and we will have this more times.
“To speak just about this and to look for excuses makes no sense. It is more important that we come through, how we can recover well, how we can adapt the training, reduce the load and find the balance between keeping the starting XI with a core, but also finding positions where we can rotate. It is a challenge and all the small details we will look at.
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New £7m charge could suggest Sheffield Wednesday ‘roll over’ from Dejphon Chansiri
Last month there were three documents that confirmed the satisfying of three previous charges involving New Avenue Projects Limited. This month, however, another satisfaction submission was made on the same day that a new charge of just over £7.3m was made public – which could suggest that rather than any debt being paid off it may be that the loan is actually being rolled over every year and that the previous satisfaction of the charges were just not lodged until last month.
Dr Dan Plumley, Principal Lecturer in Sport Finance at Sheffield Hallam University, explained, “It is always tricky to get a full handle on what is going on without the inside picture, but one possibility here is that the loan has rolled over year to year and the new charge on Companies House (on 1st October 2024) reflects this rollover…
“If this is the case, the debt and the charge on the ground, therefore, still remains and a new charge has been registered for the year to 30 September 2025. There have been notes in the published SWFC accounts over the last four years that suggest similar.
“The next set of club accounts will show if any of the debt has been paid down and of course the debt could be settled at any point. We just won’t see that in real time given the way information is filed at Companies House.”
Without any confirmation from the Owls chairman, Dejphon Chansiri, or the club itself, it’s difficult to say for certain the way things are being structured when it comes to the situation with Hillsborough, which may make the next set of accounts interesting reading from a Wednesdayite perspective.
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