Where are the players who pay the highest fees to enter Hillsborough these days?
Danny Röhl’s Sheffield Wednesday team is having a remarkable season comeback after a slow start, and they are currently battling for their lives at the bottom of the Championship table.
The Owls brought in a lot of more talent in January, and their recent additions helped them gain the crucial points they require to maintain their position in the division.
Throughout their history, the Hillsborough team has lavished money on a number of well-known players, none of whom would have cost as much as some of the players we are about to profile.
Jordan Rhodes
Let’s look at the six most costly signings Wednesday has made and their current roles. Some went on to larger and better things, while others would be best left forgotten.
Most EFL supporters don’t need much introduction to Jordan Rhodes; the prolific striker regularly found the scoreboard during his formative years, setting a record with 35 league goals during Huddersfield Town’s 2011–12 season.
Though you might need to do some convincing to get Sheffield Wednesday fans believe you of that, not many players in the bottom three divisions know where the goal is better than the marksman, who has almost 200 Football League goals to his name.
Adam Reach
Following a season-long loan from Middlesbrough, where he scored three goals in eighteen games and helped the Owls barely lose out on Premier League promotion, the move to Hillsborough was finalised in the summer of 2017 for an alleged club-record £8 million.
Things didn’t exactly go as planned for Rhodes, who was thought to be the missing piece in the puzzle for Sheffield’s quest to return to the top division. The striker scored just 15 goals in 83 league games, and neither the club nor the player will have many happy memories of his time in Sheffield.
In the summer transfer window of 2021, the forward left the Owls on a free transfer to rejoin his old team, Huddersfield Town.
Gilles De Bilde
This season, however, the 34-year-old has found fresh inspiration as he attempts to lead the Tangerines into the League One play-off spots. His loan transfer to Blackpool has allowed him to rekindle his goal-scoring ability.
Adam Reach, another player who moved from Teesside to Yorkshire, had a much more successful move than Rhodes’, reportedly costing £5 million.
Before moving to Hillsborough and spending four seasons in the blue and white, the wide player was thriving for Boro and even spent a season on loan at Preston North End.
Reach was a consistently solid player on either flank who always had an eye for the spectacular. He made several long-range hits during his stint at the club impossible to forget.
Darko Kovacevic
The offensive midfielder joined West Bromwich Albion, a team in the Championship, in the summer of 2021 after making over 200 appearances and scoring 24 goals for the Owls. Despite this, he hasn’t been nearly as productive for the Baggies, scoring only a few goals.
Gilles De Bilde, a big-money striker from Belgium, was another big-money player who fell short on Wednesday.
The attacker, who suffered a broken nose and an injured eye socket after hitting opponent Krist Porte in the face during a match in the Netherlands, had quite the reputation before moving to England—and not for the best reasons.
In the summer of 1999, with the Owls flying high in the premier league, the forward was bought by Hillsborough for an alleged £3 million cost from PSV Eindhoven. However, things did not work out as planned for everyone concerned.
Andy Hinchcliffe
With only 13 goals in 59 league games, De Bilde fell short of the heights that his 24 goals in 49 Eredivisie games had promised, and his team was relegated at the end of the 99/00 season.
After a brief loan at Aston Villa, he returned home to play for Anderlecht and then Lierse, where he went on to have a successful career as a frequent TV personality in Belgium.
De Bilde is a frequent football analyst who has also been on the Belgian version of Dancing on Ice, as well as trying his hand at modelling.
Darko Kovacevic is reported to have cost Wednesday £2.5 million, having come to England in a double swoop with Dejan Stefanovic from Red Star Belgrade, but he quit a few months after arriving.
The striker scored four goals in 16 league games for Wednesday after making an impression for the then-Yugoslavian team before being traded for the same amount as he arrived at Real Sociedad.
Italian powerhouse Juventus made an attempt to sign the striker after he scored 41 La Liga goals in three seasons, but he was unable to make an impression in Turin and eventually returned to his previous team in Spain, where he would play for the following six seasons.
After retiring from football in May 2009 due to heart surgery, he spent a time in Greece with Olympiacos, where he won two SuperLeague titles and two Greek Cups. He later joined the Piraeus-based team as a scout and later as sporting director.
Kovacevic, who assumed a comparable position at the Serbian Football Association, experienced a terrifying event in 2020 when he was shot outside his Athens home and almost survived.
Fernando Forestieri
Andy Hinchcliffe moved to Hillsborough in 1998 for a reported fee of £2.75 million, which would have been a significant amount at the time, after playing regularly for both Manchester City and Everton.
Over the following four seasons, the England international played 97 games for the Owls and scored seven goals while he was in Yorkshire.
The defender, who needed surgery on his left knee and missed the final two seasons of his career due to injuries, retired at the age of 33.
The former player has rebranded himself as a frequent analyst on Sky Sports, where he covers all of the EFL’s events in addition to being a regular in the commentary box.
After a successful loan stay, Fernando Forestieri—possibly the most successful transfer on this list—left Watford in 2013 for a reported cost of approximately £3 million.
The Argentine spent his childhood playing in the Boca Juniors academy, moved to Genoa, Italy, as a teenager, and eventually joined Serie A with Udinese.
Following the Hornets’ relocation to Vicarage Road, Forestieri quickly established himself as a fan favourite thanks to his skill and originality in the closing third of games, along with his 21 goals in three years with the team.
After joining the Owls, the small playmaker kept up his impressive performances, putting his heart on the line in every game and scoring 40 goals in 123 league games during a five-year tenure.
In the summer of 2020, he returned to Udinese, but he was unable to repeat his previous successes there, managing just three goals in 23 games. After that, he moved to Malaysia alongside Johor Darul Ta’zim.
After leaving the team earlier this year, the 34-year-old Argentine went on to win two Asian league titles with an incredible 47 goals in 69 games. As a result, he is currently without a team.
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