Sheffield Wednesday struck transfer gold with Cardiff City - a Hillsborough cult hero was born | OneFootball

Callum Paterson left Sheffield Wednesday for MK Dons this summer, but he will always be fondly remembered at Hillsborough.

Amid ongoing off-field turmoil and financial problems, Sheffield Wednesday lost a number of high-profile players this summer.

Wednesday finished in a respectable 12th place in the Championship last season under Danny Rohl, but in addition to the departure of their highly-rated manager this summer, they also had to contend with the exits of a number of their stars.

From promotion-winning heroes such as Michael Ihiekwe and Marvin Johnson to the likes of Ryo Hatsuse and Stuart Armstrong, who only spent a few months at the club, the Owls saw their squad ripped apart this summer as their financial crisis began to hit hard.

Among the more controversial moments of the summer, under-fire owner Dejphon Chansiri cashed in on talented duo Anthony Musaba and Djeidi Gassama for a combined total of just £3 million in a desperate attempt to raise funds, while forwards Josh Windass and Michael Smith had their contracts terminated after handing in their notices.

Wednesday supporters became accustomed to seeing many of their favourites depart during the summer exodus, but few players will be missed at Hillsborough as much as Callum Paterson, who made a shock move to League Two side MK Dons this summer after his contract expired.

Sheffield Wednesday hit the jackpot with Callum Paterson, Cardiff City deal

Prior to his move to Wednesday, Paterson spent three years at Cardiff City, and he thrived in South Wales after being moved into a more advanced position by manager Neil Warnock, who hilariously claimed that he made the switch after discovering that "he can’t defend".

Paterson finished as the Bluebirds' top scorer as they won promotion to the Premier League in his first season at the club after netting 10 goals in 32 appearances, and while he could not replicate that form in the subsequent years, he certainly did enough to earn fan favourite status at the Cardiff City Stadium.

After a successful spell at Cardiff, Paterson made the move to Wednesday in September 2020 for a fee of £500,000, and he immediately added battling qualities and an attacking threat to the team, but despite scoring eight goals in 43 appearances in his debut season at Hillsborough, he could not prevent his side's relegation to League One, with a six-point deduction proving costly.

Paterson played a crucial role for the club over the next two years in the third tier, and he was part of the team that won promotion back to the Championship in the 2022-23 season, with arguably his best moment in an Owls shirt coming when he netted in the historic play-off semi-final comeback victory against Peterborough United that helped to send his side to Wembley.

The 30-year-old was not always a guaranteed starter for Wednesday following their return to the Championship, but after contributing to the great escape from relegation under Rohl in the 2023-24 campaign, he scored six league goals last season as the South Yorkshire outfit recorded a top-half finish.

Paterson was offered a new contract by the Owls this summer, and after rejecting their initial proposal, it looked as though he was set to commit his future to the club when he returned to training with his former team-mates in pre-season, but he eventually made the bold decision to drop down two divisions to join ambitious League Two promotion hopefuls MK Dons.

Callum Paterson will be remembered as a Sheffield Wednesday cult hero

Paterson scored 31 goals and provided 15 assists in 186 appearances for Wednesday, which are certainly impressive numbers, but his legacy at Hillsborough extends far beyond his mere goal contribution figures.

In his five-year spell at the club, Paterson played in a host of different positions for the Owls, including centre-back, right-back, wing-back, central midfield and up front, and it is fair to say that he performed all of those roles to the same high standard, and with the same effort and commitment that the fan base came to expect from him every time he stepped onto the pitch.

There were times when it looked as though Paterson's days at Wednesday were numbered, firstly in the summer of 2022 when the arrival of Smith pushed him down the pecking order, but he fought back to play an integral part in the club's promotion, and he was deployed in a right wing-back role in his side's successful play-off campaign to great effect.

Paterson's future was again thrown into doubt last summer when it was claimed that he was free to leave if the club received a suitable bid for his services, but despite barely featuring in the first half of last season, he was one of the Owls' star performers after the turn of the year, and he finished the campaign as the club's joint-second top scorer.

While Paterson's decision to depart Wednesday for MK Dons was a surprise given the divisional gap and difference in size between the two clubs, few could blame him for wanting to escape the chaos in S6, and in a brutally honest admission, the Scot recently revealed that he did not enjoy the latter part of his time at the club as everything was "always up in the air".

Paterson was not always able to consistently produce the quality Owls supporters would have liked, but his tireless work-rate and team spirit would have been invaluable to the club this season in their current plight, and on the basis of his outstanding start to life at MK Dons, it seems he is already on the way to achieving the same cult hero status at the Stadium MK as he established at Hillsborough.