BLOG - TAKEOVERS SCARE ME BY SHAWN HOPKINS FEATURED (on the Wednesdayite website)
With the recent talk of Sammy Yu getting involved at Sheffield Wednesday, Owls fan Shawn Hopkins talks about his thoughts on foreign owner takeovers;
“Takeovers scare me! Look at the mess what the Venkys have created at Blackburn, Vincent Tan at Cardiff and the mess which Cellino will create at Leeds.
I just pray to god, or whatever it takes, that whoever takes over the Owls is the real deal. They don’t have to have the money of Abramovich or the Sheikhs at Manchester City just someone who can run us as a stable well run debt free Football club, which is an established Championship club without fearing relegation at the very least.
The potential of our club is MASSIVE. Sometimes before the game I sit there and dream of it being full on say a European night playing Sparta Prague or someone fairly average like that. When I say full for me it would be for all the people who have had season tickets for years and for the last 15 years plus we have not had it great apart from 2 or 3 seasons - not for the hangers on who decide to follow a club that is doing well.
For next season it would be nice for us to sign say 3 or 4 good quality players and us stay injury free for a change. If the supposed quality players do sign for us then let’s hope they stay fit as well as the likes of Buxton (even though Palmer did a great job), Antonio and Loovens for us to push on.
A good start is what I want. I don’t want us to be in the bottom six after 10 or 15 games. Since we left the Premier League in 2000 we haven’t had a good start to a Championship season. The decent seasons we have had were a resurgence after Laws took over when we sacked Sturrock and we finished 9th and I think the following season we finished about 12th.
When you think about it Laws did a good job until his final season after we had lost probably our 3 best players in Chris Brunt, Glenn Whelan and Madjid Bougherra who we could only replace with Etienne Esajas, Michael Gray and Darren Potter. If we were in that position again I would hope Milan would look to keep those three and add a couple more for a play-off push rather than having to sell all of them because of the debt we had.
Take the 3 best players out of any team in the world and they won’t be the same.”
Shawn