Sale could revolutionise Sheff Wed - administrator

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Parties with "significant financial means" are interested in buying Sheffield Wednesday and could "revolutionise the club", says joint administrator Kris Wigfield.

The Sheffield Wednesday Supporters' Trust, meanwhile, has revealed it is to raise funds to sign players while the club is in administration.

The Championship club and the company which owns Hillsborough were placed into administration on 24 October, with HMRC preparing to serve a winding-up order over a debt of around £1.7m. It brought to an end Dejphon Chansiri's 10-year ownership of the Owls, with Begbies Traynor appointed as administrators.

Wigfield revealed that the club had been run on such a shoestring under Chansiri. He said that after supporters flooded back after a boycott, by January the administrators could be running the club at a profit of around £1m.

Seven bidders have already come forward, and more are expected.

"We're pretty confident we've got the cashflow sorted now, so as long as fans continue to buy tickets at the rate we've predicted, then we'll be OK," Wigfield told BBC Sport.

"We're making a lot more from the club shop than we were previously. Yesterday in the kiosks [inside the ground] we made 50% more than the club usually would from a similar-sized crowd.

"We've now got seven bidders that have shown proof of funds. We're expecting that to increase. We showed one around today, of the seven, but we'll probably end up with nine or 10 serious bidders.

"We need them to satisfy us that they will make the club viable, and we need them to satisfy us that they will pass the EFL fit and proper test. But beyond that it is really who makes the best offer, not necessarily who would be the best custodian for the club.

"All of the seven interested parties that we've got at the moment are likely to significantly improve the situation, and a few of the parties have got significant financial means who would probably revolutionise the club."

A soft deadline of 21 November has been placed for first bids, but Wigfield said it could go to the stage of closed offers.

Wednesday sit bottom of the Championship table on minus four points, after incurring a 12-point penalty for going into administration. They are 17 points adrift of Oxford United in the first position outside the relegation zone.

But further points deductions are possible, with Wednesday facing charges relating to the non-payment of wages in five of the previous seven months before administration was filed.

The Owls are under five EFL embargoes, relating to financial information, funding, HMRC reporting, plus amounts owed to other clubs and to football creditors.

The Sheffield Wednesday Supporters' Trust has raised money towards the running of the club, with chairman Ian Bennett saying more plans are in place to try to fund new signings.

"I think in the fundraiser we've raised £58,000 on the GoFundMe, we've put £20,000 in from our funds, and there was £10,000 raised by [fans' forum] Owlstalk," Bennett told BBC Sport.

"So that's the total at the minute for the fundraising. Obviously that's a drop in the ocean to what the club needs.

"We're looking at putting something together to raise some money so the administrators can try and sign a few players and carry on running the club on a day-to-day basis.

"I think it's going to be a two-pronged attack. We're going to have to approach high net worth individuals for substantial amounts. And secondly, we're going to have to approach the fanbase as we have been doing and try to keep raising money, try to encourage them to spend, turn up at the games and just put money into the pot."

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