Sheffield Wednesday: Kris Wigfield drops Henrik Pedersen claim as Owls usher in new David Storch era | OneFootball

Confirmation of Wednesday's sale means that Kris Wigfield leaves as administrator, but he left with a message which included manager Henrik Pedersen.

Sheffield Wednesday are now under new ownership, and the club's departing administrator had a lengthy goodbye message which offered a potential clue regarding the future of manager Henrik Pedersen.

It was a day that Owls fans had long waited for. Confirmation had been received that the new ownership of the club had been confirmed before the start of their final game of the season against West Bromwich Albion, and before kick-off a countdown confirmed that the EFL had waived the 15-point deduction that had been hanging over the club's head since entering administration in October 2025.

And then once the game got started, the Wednesday team put in a performance worthy of the occasion. A sell-out crowd of 33,750, many of them in Hawaii-themed fancy dress, saw their team win the match 2-1, a result which lifted them to the symbolically important total of zero points for the season.

Among the send-offs necessary now that the dust at Hillsborough can start to settle is that of Kris Wigfield, the Wednesday-supporting administrator of insolvency practitioners Begbies Traynor, who've overseen the rescue of the club.

He's been overseeing the day-to-day running of the club since the end of October, and he had a lot of people to thank in his goodbye message to the club.

Kris Wigfield statement issues possible hint over the future of Henrik Pedersen

With Kris Wigfield now leaving his position overseeing the day-to-day running of Sheffield Wednesday, the administrator has posted a lengthy message on the social media platform X offering his thanks to those who helped get the club through what has been a very difficult six months.

And one of those thanked by Wigfield in this statement was head coach Henrik Pedersen, about whom he expressed his gratitude "for his understanding and leadership when difficult football decisions had to be made".

The manager's position following the club's sale out of administration has been subject to considerable conjecture, but this message offers a window into the thinking behind the scenes at the club.

This was Pedersen's first season of managing in England, and the challenges that he's faced have been most unlike the challenges that a manager would, over the course of a regular season.

But with a record-low points tally recorded in the entire history of the EFL this season, there have been questions asked over whether he should continue in the position at the club.

Wigfield's praise for him in this particular message is a sign that the new owners will be looking to continue with him next season, and Pedersen was seemingly very emotional over the news that the Owls would start next season with no points deduction.

Henrik Pedersen's first season as Sheffield Wednesday manager has contained challenges that no manager should have to face

It's fair to say that Henrik Pedersen's first season as the manager of Sheffield Wednesday was a baptism of fire.

He was appointed into the position as a result of a falling out between his predecessor, Danny Rohl, and the club's former owner Dejphon Chansiri, which led to a brief stand-off during which time it was difficult to tell whether Rohl would be leading the team through this season or not before he departed.

With that decision eventually made and Pedersen installed in his place, the problems quickly started to build. The club had started to show signs of the distress to come over that summer break, with wages not being paid on time, and the imposition of a transfer embargo by the EFL over this breach of the rules led to a threadbare squad starting the season.

In one more high-profile example of how Chansiri's mismanagement was damaging their chances on the pitch, they lost both of their two top goalscorers from the 2024-25 season - Josh Windass and Michael Smith - to Wrexham and Preston North End respectively after the players exercised their contractual rights to leave for nothing after the club failed to pay their wages on time.

Issues of this nature presented themselves repeatedly throughout the season. By January, relegation was all but a formality and the club, by this time in administration, had to sell just to stay in business.

Highly thought-of talents Yisa Alao and Bailey Cadamarteri were sold to Chelsea and Wrexham respectively, but the real hammer blow came at the end of the window when captain Barry Bannan, who'd run up almost 500 appearances for the club over the previous decade, left for Millwall.

Pedersen bore these departures with as much grace as could reasonably be mustered, and managed the team through the season with dignity, given how insurmountable the conditions he had to work under clearly were.

With the end of the season having arrived, and new ownership now installed at Hillsborough, thoughts will now turn to what changes need to be made over the course of the summer in order to make Sheffield Wednesday competitive over the course of the summer. There is a case for saying that the Wednesday team have underperformed by any standards this season.

But Henrik Pedersen has stuck by the club throughout this season, and the fact that he's made it through this season suggests that he deserves a chance on a level playing field with the other clubs in League One.

It's likely that there will still be restrictions in place. It was reported in March that they could be subject to a £7k-a-week cap on individual player wages, with a maximum total wage spend of £7m next season, which has been described as ‘senseless and moronic’ by the club's supporters trust. There's been no indication that this has been dropped along with the 15-point deduction.

Yet at the same time, nothing has been confirmed that this cap will be in place either, and even if it is, the Sheffield Star spoke to lawyer and agent Garry Dickinson in March, who confirmed that it might not be a huge impediment to their summer transfer activity even if it is, telling them: "Somebody is not going to come from £20,000 a week at another club and come to Wednesday for £7,000 for example.

"And agents won’t want that either because the more money a player is on the bigger the cut for the agent. But I think you are going to get a lot of young and hungry players who £7,000 is going to be a lot of money to."

Pedersen has confirmed that he wants to stay at Sheffield Wednesday more than once this season. At the start of April, for example, he told BBC Radio Sheffield that, "I have a contract for two more years and I love to stay here and we have some really good conversations, so I do all that I can to prepare Sheffield Wednesday in the best possible way for a season in League One."

Whether he gets that opportunity for now remains unconfirmed. But with two years left on his contract, offloading him now wouldn't be inexpensive, and he does carry the significant advantages of continuity and knowing the players who have been playing for them this season. As the preparations start for what's likely to be a very busy summer at Hillsborough, Henrik Pedersen remains the favourite to lead them into next season, for now.