The Daily: Tuesday 20th June, 2023

Sheffield Wednesday confusion and Saka's perfect end of season.

I regret to inform you that Sheffield Wednesday are doing Sheffield Wednesday things again

Your initial reaction is to think, “Woah, WHAT?”, but your second is to think, “Well, if there was a club that was going to make me think, ‘Woah, WHAT?’, it was probably to be Sheffield Wednesday.” The news that Wednesday have parted ways by mutual consent with manager Darren Moore and his entire backroom staff just three weeks after taking the club to promotion struck like a lightning bolt from out of the blue, yesterday afternoon.

The club’s official statement on the matter explained the whats and the whos of it all, but it didn’t answer the most pressing question of all for Wednesday supporters: why? Sheffield Wednesday racked up 96 points in League One, last season. In just about any other season, they would have coasted to promotion on that number. It’s difficult to argue that they weren’t slightly unfortunate to run into both last season’s Plymouth Argyle and Ipswich Town teams at the same time.

And the way in which they got promoted through the play-offs was the absolute height of drama, involving a comeback for the ages and a late, late winner in the play-off final that almost seemed to leap straight from the pages of a 1970s edition of Roy of the Rovers. But if Wednesday did ride their luck a little in the play-offs—and that’s debatable—most would agree that they paid for a little luck after missing out on automatic promotion with 96 points.

The fairly common assumpton on social media is that this is some way the fault of Dejphon Chansiri. Presumably more (“Moore”) information will be made available at a fans’ forum due to be held tonight which the Sheffield Star has confirmed will be going ahead. It promises to be spicy, and the problems that face Chansiri are already mounting up. He does have a history of eccentric decision-making, and after the highs of last season Moore’s stock couldn’t have been higher with the club’s supporters.

“By mutual consent” can, of course, mean just about anything; all it really means is that there has been some form of negotiated settlement. It doesn’t say who intigateed it, and it is possible that Moore resigned. Perhaps he has another job lined up elsewhere. Within hours of this newsletter having been sent, there may be some answers to these questions. Because all there was on the evening of the announcement was thousands of perplexed looked Sheffield Wednesday supporters and a newly-promoted football club with no manager.

Saka shines for England

What a feeling it must be, to score your first professional hat-trick. And what must it feel like for that first hat-trick to come for your national team? Well, that seems to be the charmed life that Bukayo Saka is living at the moment. With a huge salary increase from his new Arsenal contract and heading out of the 2022/23 season scoring goals for fun, Saka finishes the season as he has been for so much of it; on a high.

But there was reason for Gareth Southgate to take greater cheer still from England’s 7-0 win against North Macedonia at Old Trafford last night. This was the first time that Marcus Rashford, Harry Kane and Bukayo Saka had started in the same team, and they scored five between them to put the game well out of reach of admittedly limited opposition by the time 51 minutes had been played, and six in total out of that seven. It’s difficult to imagine Southgate unleashing this sort of triple-threat against stronger opposition, but there’s food for thought in the fact that he’s seen it, and that it can work.

The end of England’s 2022/23 season comes with them back on an upward trajectory. Defeat in the quarter-finals of the World Cup only came by a slender margin against the team who only lost the final by the slenderest, and early results this year—especially that win in Naples—have set them fair for qualification for the Euro 2024 finals, unless something were to go hilariously wrong. On the evidence of the football they’ve played so far in 2023, this doesn’t seem particularly likely.

Wales continue to slide from view

In the end, perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening was that it took as long as 72 minutes for the dam to finally burst. Turkey had already had two goals disallowed and had a penalty kick saved by the Wales goalkeeper Danny Ward before they finally took the lead. Wales had been playing with ten since the 41st minute sending off of Joe Morrell for a high challenge.

This has been a disastrous end to the season for Wales. Taking four points from their first two games against Croatia and Latvia put them in a decent position going into critical games against Armenia and Turkey, but on both occasions over the last few days they’ve been well beaten, with the pressure building on manager Rob Page to a point that it may already be unsustainable.

But it should be added that there is a surprise challenger in this group. A stoppage-time goal from Tigran Barseghyan of Slovan Bratislava gave Armenia a 2-1 win against Latvia in Yerevan to put second in their Euro 2024 qualifying group behind Turkey. Croatia are third, two points behind Armenia but with a game in hand. Armenia play both Turkey and Croatia in the space of four days in the September international break.

Don’t think we didn’t notice, Bournemouth

There is a reflexive reaction to the decision of Bournemouth to sack Gary O’Neil that is similar to that which we might have felt over the Darren Moore departure from Sheffield Wednesday. Bournemouth finished last season in 15th place in the Premier League, five points clear of the relegation places, and there’s a case for saying that, having been given the job last season, it is harsh to be replacing him when he accomplished the mission of keeping the club in the Premier League.

But the speed with which they made their replacement indicates that this was all planned, and there’s a case for it making sense. The managerial scrap heap is littered with former assistants or coaches signed on full-time contracts after initial success when hired on an interim basis. There doesn’t seem to be much basis to believe that this sort of appointment often works, though correlation does not always sequal causation, and if new owner Bill Foley is serious about pushing in the direction of European football, this could be considered an obvious place to start.

Andoni Iraola is the new man at The Vitality Stadium. Formerly of Rayo Vallecano, who he took to 11th place in La Liga last season Iraola is certainly a creative choice, and it’s difficult to argue that he isn’t an upgrade on O’Neil. And it’s harsh, absolutely harsh. But the speed of that decision-making and the clarity of thought and purpose which, we may also surmise, goes a long way towards explaining by Bournemouth are where they are and why Sheffield Wednesday have been where they have been. Both clubs took the same gamble on the same day. Let’s see where they both end up.