Before the season started, I would have bitten your hand off for fourteenth place. Online forums, seemingly on a Storch-inspired high, were awash with predictions of Wednesday’s imminent promotion push, but my hopes were far more modest. With an almost completely new squad, some still pretty severe transfer restrictions and an untested manager, a second successive relegation seemed more likely to me than a promotion push.
Henrik Pedersen, however, is making me look a fool. I was neutral towards the Dane coming into this season, considering 2025/26 a complete write-off in terms of gauging managerial competence, but he has won me over, and it’s not just based upon results.
We look like a team that will concede few goals, a quality fans often overlook in favour of the sexiness of high-scoring, attacking football. Only three teams in the division have conceded fewer than Wednesday, despite the fact our goals against column has been inflated by the worst penalty decision seen at Hillsborough since Gordon Watson and a couple of absolute howlers from Gabriel Otegbayo. The way Pedersen sets up our team, with Bannan and a plus one just in front of the centre backs, means we will not concede many clear-cut chances this season.
Five games in, and I still don’t know whether Joe Lumley is a good shot-stopper, so infrequently has he been forced into difficult saves. He is, however, potentially the most important signing we made over the summer.
Given that most chances, and therefore goals, we concede this year will be from set pieces and crosses, the most important abilities for the Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper are commanding his area and dealing with crosses. Lumley has proven to be an absolute master of both, so much so that I would genuinely rather have him in the net this season than Pierce Charles. Charles’s strengths were shot stopping and passing, great for the top two divisions, but not what Pedersen’s Wednesday need right now.
In terms of our attack, there have been signs of something special. Ten minutes into the Bradford City game, I messaged a friend saying this was like watching the Wednesday teams of the early nineties. Whilst that text came back to bite me, there have been real signs of excitement with some of the link-up play. Admittedly, this has been the exception rather than the norm; it appears that building up an understanding amongst a defensive unit is quicker than amongst an attacking one.
Even though our performances overall haven’t been amazing, most halves we’ve played have had the air of a higher-division team playing a lower-division team in the cup, Wednesday taking the role of the former. When our opponents have the ball, we don’t often look like conceding, and the options available to Pedersen up front mean we will always have goals in us. The average team in League One needs five or six decent chances to score a goal, whereas Wednesday are proving more clinical. I expect a lot of opposition fans this season will moan about how lucky Wednesday were against them, ignoring the fact that in the long run, you absolutely do make your own luck.
None of this happens by accident, and we should give Henrik Pedersen his dues. Last season, despite having the worst squad in English Football League history, we rarely got turned over, with only Coventry scoring five against us, Swansea and Oxford four. That should have been a sign for fans to trust Pedersen a bit more, especially given his popularity amongst the players.
This season, he has already set us playing in a style that is going to be difficult for opponents to break down, while also emphasising quick counter attacks with wing backs encouraged to join four very attack-minded players up top. Wherever we finish this season, and it will be above fourteenth, Wednesday have already surpassed my expectations in terms of the presence we bring to games. We look like a promotion team.
Granted, with bottom-of-the-table Wigan Athletic up next, the early-season fixtures have been kind to us, but with three of the four games post-Wigan against teams in the top six, this current crop of Wednesday players will face their toughest period yet. I, for one, am happy that we have Henrik Pedersen to see us through it.
Image Credit : BBC Sport