Sheffield United fans go berserk. Sheffield Wednesday’s Dejphon Chansiri forecast has come true – nearly nine years later.

Sheffield Wednesday have gone into administration, an outcome predicted over a decade ago by a fan of their main rivals.

Sheffield Wednesday’s collapse into administration at the end of last week had one impact that spoke eloquently about the club’s situation at the time.

The fans were so desperate for Dejphon Chansiri’s removal before he could do even more damage to their club that the prospect of insolvency, along with a minimum 12-point deduction, was met with a huge sigh of relief from the blue and white half of the city.

The reaction of fans from other clubs has been as telling.

Wednesday’s fan rallies against its owners have won the fan base a lot of respect, especially from those who have been through a similar trauma before. But there is one group of fans that are unlikely to appreciate Wednesday fans in any way, and they should not be expected to. These are the fans of Sheffield United, the team that represents the city’s red and white half.

Blades fan accurately forecasts Sheffield Wednesday’s future under Chansiri, and in more ways than one.

One tweet from a Sheffield United fan published nearly a decade ago has proven to be frighteningly prescient in its predictions for the eventual conclusion of Dejphon Chansiri’s ownership of the club. On November 19, 2016, Blades supporter @PaddysMad posted on the social media site X, “Hopefully Chansiri leaves, Wendy go into Admin, and there left with Hansiri on them seats.”

When he rediscovered the tweet earlier this week, the account received a flood of responses recognizing his soothsaying abilities.

Others sought to compare him with arguably the greatest fortune-teller of them all.

Of course, there were plenty of Sheffield Wednesday fans present to point out that some of his forecasts may not have been as accurate.

Wednesday’s unravelling was predictable, but the missing “C” from the North Stand wasn’t

Of course, some portions of this tweet were more predictable than others. In November 2016, Dejphon Chansiri had taken over ownership of the club at the beginning of the previous year and was already spending a large sum of money to construct a side capable of returning to the Premier League.

On November 19, 2016, the possibility of Sheffield Wednesday returning to the Premier League was far from a pipe dream. Earlier that day, they’d drew 1-1 at Fulham, leaving them in ninth place in the Championship league, only two points behind a play-off spot. And Wednesday came close that season, finishing fourth in the table before losing on penalties in the play-off semi-finals to Huddersfield Town.

This was, of course, the closest Sheffield Wednesday would get to the Premier League under the soon-to-be former owner, and by the 2017-18 season, they were selling Hillsborough to a Chansiri-owned firm in order to avoid violating PSR laws. They were demoted to League One in 2021, their first time in the third tier in nearly a decade.

While it may have been clear that Chansiri was taking a big risk by spending so much money, the missing “C” from the stand is more difficult to explain.

As part of his club sponsorship, the former owner had written his surname all over the ground, including on white seats against a blue background in Hillsborough’s North Stand.

But, with his absence from Wednesday’s day-to-day operations established, efforts began almost immediately to remove some of the most visible remnants of his ownership. As one supporter wrote in a post on the Wednesday forum Owlstalk at the end of last week, “If anyone called Hans wants to buy the club now, we could save time and just take out the -iri.”

Of course, there is still the possibility that a Howard Ansiri will step in to acquire or sponsor Sheffield Wednesday. But he’ll need to get his skates on because the chances of those remaining tickets being available for much longer appear to be slim.