So much joy has been sucked out of Sheffield Wednesday - it’s time they blew it back in and fast

At the time of writing? 45 days on from Wembley, or 56 days on from Hillsborough’s staging of the greatest play-off comeback of all-time.

Since then? Altogether, now.. “Six senior exits, one Darren Moore shock, a five-hour fan forum, 16-day managerial hunt, two clarification statements, one cringey press conference, three pricey ticket announcements, thousands of angry social media exchanges, one transfer addition..”

All that’s left to wait for is the arrival of ‘Richie Partridge in a pear tree’ and we’ll have a half-decent ditty to go at.

Sobering, that. How have we got to gallows humour so soon after rampant euphoria, a sun-baked Wembley Way and glory beyond compare - in recent memory at least?

This writer has in the past been more than a little guilty of gauging the mood of Sheffield Wednesday supporters entirely via Twitter timelines. It’s a fool’s errand and delivers false results of showy extremism.

But the phone-ins, the Twitter Spaces conversations, the general discourse beyond the rabid bun-fightery that is social media? It’s saddening to see where the mood of the wider Owls fan base is so soon after 120+3 and all that. It’s maddening to see how it has unfolded.

What an open goal of an opportunity spurned.

Many supporters - not all, it is important to stress - feel their passion and loyalty has been taken advantage of when it comes to the cost of matchday ticket prices. Where last summer seven newbies boarded the plane to Portugal, the stalling nature of the club’s football process has welcomed no new faces through the door just a couple of days before they jet off to their pre-season training camp in Spain.

Look, it’s difficult to strike the right tone of these pieces. Doom and gloom is not the answer to anything and is certainly not the aim here.

In Xisco Wednesday have a charismatic and talented young manager that has achieved promotion from the Championship and has impressed those within the Owls camp already in his short time there. He’s full of personality, he’s got a track record of being popular with players and staff alike and he’s an exciting appointment. And the fact of the matter is that Wednesday are back in the second tier.

Dejphon Chansiri speaks an awful lot about the negativity of journalists and the negativity of ‘a minority of supporters’.

Though not to the degree that social media would have you believe perhaps, that minority seems to have grown fairly rapidly in the last few weeks. It’s not healthy for anyone.

Football moves fast. Moods move faster. The concerns - not least over the cost of being a Sheffield Wednesday supporter - should never be pushed to one side. The concerns raised are more than fair and shouldn’t be gaslighted as attempts to raise profiles or damage the club.

But a flurry of exciting signings and the immediate Wednesday conversation shifts. From a purely short-term, footballing point of view, that’s what so many will want. Nobody is getting much out of the mood as things stand.

As things stand, Sheffield Wednesday’s squad is weaker than it was as we all left Wembley on that beautiful Bank Holiday.

We’re 22 days out from the big EFL curtain raiser against Southampton and a lot can change. Change it absolutely must.