Sheffield Wednesday are falling short of expectations this season.
Carlton Palmer has blamed Sheffield Wednesday’s problems on Owls chairman Dejphon Chansiri.
Wednesday, who reached the play-offs in each of the previous two campaigns, have failed to win any of their last seven Championship fixtures and are now only six points above the relegation places in 17th position.
The Owls’ recent form can be largely explained by injuries, with manager Jos Luhukay unable to call on 10 first team players – Keiren Westwood, Tom Lees, Joost van Aken, Sam Hutchinson, Kieran Lee, Barry Bannan, Almen Abdi, Gary Hooper, Steven Fletcher and Fernando Forestieri – during his five-week reign.
But according to Palmer, a key member of the successful Wednesday side of the early 1990s, the issues at Hillsborough are far more deep-rooted.
“There are a lot of problems at Sheffield Wednesday,” Palmer told the Ref Show on Monday. “Carlos [Carvalhal, the former Sheffield Wednesday manager] wanted to change around the playing staff. He needed to freshen things up. First of all they weren’t fit, secondly there were players there that they took a gamble on that if they got promotion in 18 months, they’d have done the job and they could have rolled them on.
“As I understand it, the chairman didn’t want… and the manager doesn’t have the say in when these players can be sold.”
Even after his departure by mutual consent, Carvalhal described Chansiri as the best chairman he had ever had.
But Palmer added: “He can’t say anything different because once you sign on the dotted line and you’ve agreed to work with the chairman, then you can’t turn around and say that the chairman hasn’t backed him.
“And you can’t argue with the chairman in terms with the money that he’s put in the football club. But when you don’t know about the game of football – which he doesn’t know, and I’m being respectful here – he doesn’t know about the game of football and I can give you a parallel example: QPR; Tony Fernandes. It’s only now that [Fernandes has] appointed the right people in the football club who are advising him correctly that they are managing to straighten things out.
“[Chansiri] needs somebody to advise him who hasn’t got a vested interest in an agency or whatever, who knows about the game of football.”
Carvalhal has since taken the reins at Swansea City, who have won four and lost just one of their seven Premier League matches under the Portuguese – to climb off the foot of the table and up to 16th position.
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