Sheffield Wednesday have just been relegated. So why is everyone so happy?

“I've been hearing this phrase y'all got over here that I ain't too crazy about,” says Ted Lasso, the star of the eponymous Apple TV comedy about a US football coach trying to make his way in English football. "It's the hope that kills you. Y'all know that? I disagree, you know? I think it's the lack of hope that comes and gets you. See, I believe in hope.”

Perhaps channelling his inner Ted Lasso in an interview with The Athletic last week, Sheffield Wednesday’s new American owner David Storch said he wanted the Owls to be “the best football club in the world”. Like Lasso's belief that his relegation-threatened team AFC Richmond can beat the superstars of Manchester City, it was an eye-opening claim. At the moment, Sheffield Wednesday isn’t even the best football club in their own city.

Coming off what was officially the worst season in English football history – with only two wins all year, and ending the season on a total of zero points – it’s easy to imagine the club in crisis mode, licking its wounds and believing success is further away than ever. Instead, suddenly the sky is the limit. There is talk of partnerships with a tequila brand owned by Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey and visits from basketball legend Michael Jordan. So why is everyone so positive?

“I think you need bad times to appreciate good times, and, my word, have there been bad times,” says Alan Biggs, a sportswriter and broadcaster who has been covering football in Yorkshire for almost half a century. In that time Biggs has seen Sheffield Wednesday reach the very top of English football as inaugural members of the Premier League in 1992 and League Cup winners in 1991. Fresher in his memory, and that of many fans, however, are the “indignities and appalling mismanagement” of the last decade.

The last time there was this much positivity around the club was the summer of 2023. The “Miracle of Hillsborough” was followed by a last gasp win at Wembley and promotion to the Championship, something which had seemed impossible after the club had lost the first leg of the play-off semi-final to Peterborough 4-0. But then it all fell apart. Just weeks before the new season was due to start, promotion-winning manager Darren Moore left after falling out with former chairman Dejphon Chansiri (whose increasingly bizarre stewardship of the club morphed into something approaching deliberate sabotage). In came Xisco Muñoz, who lasted just 92 days and failed to win a single game.

To say the last three seasons have been traumatic for Owls fans is an understatement. Last season Wednesday lurched from one crisis to the next, with players going unpaid, followed by transfer bans and points deductions (sanctions to punish the club for not paying its players) imposed on an already struggling team.

With Chansiri gone, Wednesday fans finally have hope again. The previous chairman’s unwillingness to sell almost led to the club going out of existence. In that context, Biggs says that the greatest prize in football isn’t trophies or titles, but reclaiming your club and being able to follow them again with pride. “The change in the mood around the club has been nothing short of remarkable,” he says. “I have never seen a turnaround like it.”

Some of this sudden improvement can be attributed to the new team steering the club: CEO David Bruce, as well as co-owner David Storch, his son Michael and another investor, Tom Costin. Storch hails from New York City originally, and made his fortune in the aviation industry, while Bruce has enjoyed a long career in sports marketing. And all of this collective experience seems to be paying off. Even this early on, the new owners seem to have learned one big lesson that has turned things round for Sheffield Wednesday.