Why communication has proved to be vital at Sheffield Wednesday

Very little at Sheffield Wednesday translates into common sense and the running of the place appears to be an ever worsening complete and utter shambles.

Incredibly enough, it’s only a team sitting bottom of the Championship that offers a shaft of light - under a management of such high pedigree that you wonder how on earth it was lured to the club. Is this to be blacked out as well? Well, here’s what’s at stake …

It’s a small point in this multi-lingual international game but I can understand what Danny Rohl is saying (which is more than I could say for the club itself). I’d guess the same can be said for the players - I get how they are intending to climb from the foot of the Championship. As opposed to not understanding what the previous management, under Xisco Munoz, was saying. Which I’d imagine was also the same for the players.

Sometimes I honestly think it’s as basic as that. There’s this mystique in our game now that a foreign accent is better than an English one, somehow conveying profound truths. It sounds exotic and makes us believe that incomprehension is based on our own stupidity.

Which might be true at times. Marcelo Bielsa was breathtakingly brilliant at Leeds, a genius even, without conducting a single conversation that could be understood without an interpreter. However - and hats off here to the many foreign coaches who speak our language far better than we could theirs - effective communication is paramount surely.

Rohl, as a German, is not only skilled in English, he is concise. He does not set off on long rambles like his predecessor, he makes his points clearly and succinctly. So this is not a rant against overseas coaches, far from it, more a matter of commonsense about what works and what doesn’t.

Effective communication is vital. The indications are that Rohl has got his points across instantly. Wednesday watchers could see it in the two away games, even in defeat, before the sharpness, freshness and clarity of that long-awaited first win last Sunday.

Just as importantly it tilted heads towards the field of play. But only ever so briefly before the post-Wembley “sledgehammer” swung into action once more. And all that makes sense could be ruined by all that doesn’t from an owner who appears to have plunged the club into an existential crisis.