Wednesday owner and chairman Dejphon Chansiri has this evening released a statement on the club website following today’s relegation to division one.
It reads as follows:
As your owner and chairman, I take full responsibility for everything that happens at our club. I am the leader and in good times or bad, the responsibility for Sheffield Wednesday lies with me. I am sorry to you all that we have been relegated.
This was never what I anticipated when I came to Hillsborough in 2015, my vision was to take Wednesday into the Premier League. We came so close in 2016 and then again in 2017 and since then the times have not been so good at all.
In football, in sport, there are highs and there are lows and right now, this is the lowest I have felt and I know you will be feeling the same. There are no guarantees in football, we have tried our best but our best was not good enough.
We must now face the reality of what lies ahead and for next season at least, that is League One.
We must pick ourselves up from the floor and move forward in a positive way. We have had plans for both scenarios and now our immediate future is clear, we can start to put those plans into place.
I can pledge that as chairman, I will give everything I can and offer as much support as possible to everyone as we try and achieve promotion at the first attempt. There are issues we must address in the short and long term and some things will not happen overnight.
I would like to say thank you to the coaching staff who stepped up in Darren’s absence and also to everyone who has worked so hard during what has become one of, if not the most, challenging season in the history of Sheffield Wednesday.
It has ended in the worst possible way but we have to look for the light at the end of the tunnel. We will rebuild on the pitch, and off it, the day when fans return cannot come soon enough. I say thank you to our fans, it has been soulless without having you following the team home and away and I know all clubs say the same but we have missed your support so much.
Like all of you, I hope that life can return to normal soon and in football, that will mean having our fans back into Hillsborough and following the team around the country in the numbers that you do.
You do not deserve this end to a season that in so many ways we will want to forget but in others we can look back on in time as a turning point for the revival of our club.