The situation at Sheffield Wednesday has become a waiting game. HMRC is yet to serve a winding-up petition to the club but that is expected at any time.
Things will develop in the next 24 hours because all PAYE payments for the prior month’s wages fall on the 22nd. Therefore, Wednesday’s debt to HMRC – the source of the anticipated winding-up petition – will grow.
On top of this, another pay day for players and staff is on the horizon.
It is unclear whether people will be paid on time at this moment but given the issues last month, with owed salaries eventually resolved due to a received payment from the EFL, there is a chance the same problem will occur again for October’s pay.
This has already been a hugely challenging period for people working at the club and the continued uncertainty over their wages is a bleak, horrible, monthly event.
There is something else to consider here. Had Dejphon Chansiri opted to go into administration – a not ideal scenario but certainly one that is preferable to being wound-up – any appointed administrator could have got to work in order to keep the club running before an eventual sale.
Because the Chansiri era would effectively be over, fans could have had the opportunity to end boycotts, rush into Hillsborough in their droves, go back to buying pies and pints, go and get replica shirts in the club shop – all with the mission of supporting the administrators.
With the situation dragging on, and with a well-publicised boycott of the Middlesbrough game going ahead, the gate receipts and other financial benefits of that match and the game against Oxford will have been squandered.
It will make for frustrating reading for supporters. Even at the 11th hour, things are being delayed.
It speaks to how things have operated under Chansiri at Hillsborough. Too often he has taken decisions that do not really make any sense, and he likely would have been advised to act differently.
Instead the waiting game continues, for no obvious benefit.
Unless he can find the money to pay HMRC (and so far he clearly has not been able to) the outcome will be the same. When the winding-up petition is issued, the end of Chansiri’s era will surely be near.
