Mandaric saves Sheffield Wednesday

Milan Mandaric appeared to have rescued English football crisis club Sheffield Wednesday from the brink of financial collapse after his eight million pounds (12 million dollars) purchase of the Yorkshire side was confirmed by the London Stock Exchange on Monday.

Wednesday, once one of England’s leading clubs but now in the third division, have been labouring under debts of 30 million pounds (47 million dollars).

But the 72-year-old Mandaric, who will quit as chairman of Championship or second division Leicester ahead of their match against Midlands rivals Nottingham Forest on Monday, has agreed to wipe out Wednesday’s debts after reaching agreement with all their major creditors.

“I believe this to be one of the most important days in the recent history of our great club,” said Wednesday chairman Howard Wilkinson.

“Our trials and tribulations have been well documented, but I can now see a brighter future for Sheffield Wednesday.

“Our club has been on the brink of administration and if this were to happen then so many people around our club would have suffered.”

Shareholders have yet to give the final all clear to the deal but the club has said they already have “irrevocable undertakings from 43.6 percent of the company’s shareholders to vote in favour of the deal” at an extraordinary general meeting on December 14.

Former Owls manager Wilkinson added: “I will always be grateful to Milan Mandaric for showing the determination to save Sheffield Wednesday.”

Mandaric said: “Sheffield Wednesday is one of the most famous names in football.

“I give the supporters and everybody who cares for this club an assurance that if shareholders vote in favour of this deal, then I will do everything in my power, working with Howard, Nick and (Wednesday manager) Alan Irvine to again make Sheffield Wednesday a real force in English football.”

Wednesday are currently fourth in League One, the English game’s third tier and battling for promotion to the Championship, the division below the lucrative Premier League.

As recently as 2000, Wednesday were a member of English football’s top-flight and were runners-up in both the FA and League Cup finals of 1993.

But the four-times champions of England, albeit the last of those titles was won in 1930, have struggled recently.

Last term they were relegated to League One on the final day of the season following a 2-2 draw against Crystal Palace in a match where a Wednesday win would have sent the Londoners down instead and preserved the Yorkshire club’s second division status.

Mandaric, a Serbian-American businessman whose wealth derives from his time as an entrepreneur in California’s ‘Silicon Valley’ in the 1970s, made his name in English football at south coast side Portsmouth.

At Pompey, he inherited a club languishing in the Championship but turned them into a Premier League team, laying the foundations for their subsequent 2008 FA Cup success.