Sheffield Wednesday hit the jackpot with £2m Ajax transfer agreement | OneFootball

Gerald Sibon was a two-time fans' player of the year at Hillsborough

The early 2000s isn't a period that lives fondly in the memories of Sheffield Wednesday fans.

The Owls saw in the new millennium sat rock bottom in the Premier League with just nine points in 19 games, were eventually relegated later that season, and then their return to the second tier for the first time in a decade was arguably even worse.

That 1999/2000 campaign was the last time that Wednesday played in the top flight, with the 2000s kicking off their recent time spent bouncing between the Championship and League One.

Having come into the 2000/01 Division One campaign with expectations of jumping straight back to the top flight like they did the last time they were in the second tier, the Owls were shocked with a 17th-placed finish, then a 20th-placed one, and then a 22nd-placed one and subsequent relegation in their third year.

However, despite all the turmoil on the field, there was one shining light in it all. Towering Dutch forward, Gerald Sibon.

Standing at six-foot-six, Sibon stuck around at Hillsborough after the Owls were relegated and became a well-liked figure during their time in the second tier.

Gerald Sibon's sole Premier League campaign at Sheffield Wednesday

After coming through youth academies in his native Holland at the likes of Groningen and FC Twente, Sibon ended up on the books of Dutch giants Ajax in 1997.

Despite wearing the number nine shirt at the time, the frontman didn't get much of a look-in in Amsterdam, and thus set his sights on a move away from the Netherlands for the first time in his career.

To the Premier League he went, with Sheffield Wednesday spending £2 million to bring him to the club in July 1999.

Wednesday had floated around the midtable of the Premier League for close to a decade at that time, with a few seventh-placed finishes and even a third-placed one thrown in there too. The year before, the Owls had finished 12th under Danny Wilson, but not many were expecting the campaign that they had in the 1999/2000 term.

A disastrous start to the campaign saw Sibon rarely feature in the opening stages. After starting the opening two games, the Dutchman started just one more Premier League bout in 1999 — a 3-0 loss to Leicester City.

Form slowly started to pick up after Boxing Day, when the Owls picked up just their second win of the campaign. For Sibon, there was a nine-game run from January to March where he started each Premier League game, scoring twice in draws against both Arsenal and Derby County.

The Dutchman ended his sole Premier League campaign with five goals, including one in the 3-3 draw in the penultimate game of the season with Arsenal, confirming Wednesday's relegation to the old Division One.

Starting just 12 times that campaign, it's safe to say that Sibon's time at Hillsborough would improve drastically during their time in the second tier.

Gerald Sibon came into his own at Sheffield Wednesday in the First Division

Sibon was a squad player during his first year at Sheffield Wednesday, but after deciding to stick things out at Hillsborough following the Owls' relegation, he was handed more starts, and he consequently began to have more of an impact in games.

Wednesday could've suffered back-to-back relegations given how poorly they started the 2000/01 campaign, with just one win and nine losses in their opening 12 games.

Sibon waited until late October to bag his first goal of that campaign, and went on to score a further 12, including a hat-trick in a 5-2 win over QPR, as the Owls completed a great escape to finish well clear of the bottom three.

Things were getting gradually worse the following year, but that didn't stop the Dutchman from bagging another 12 to ensure that Wednesday stayed above the dotted line and avoided relegation to the Second Division.

Evidently, his goals were keeping the Owls up, as he finished as the club's top scorer in both of those years, and he won the fans' player of the year in back-to-back seasons, too.

His nine goals in all competitions during the first half of the 2002/03 campaign saw him end up the club's top scorer that year as well, even though, in January 2003, he returned to Holland, signing with Heerenveen for an undisclosed fee.

At the time, some people felt that Sibon was jumping ship early to avoid it sinking with him, after Wednesday had once again won just twice through the opening four months of the campaign.

However, many didn't blame him, as it was clear that he was the only positive in those Owls sides who limped to safety in the second tier before succumbing to a second relegation in four years.

There were a lot of poor financial decisions being made at Hillsborough during the early 2000s, but for £2 million, Sibon goes down as one of the rare wins at that time.