Sheffield Wednesday had started the League One season reasonably well in terms of results but as results drifted and performances continued to underwhelm, The Owls have now parted company with Henrik Pedersen.

Having been in administration last summer, Sheffield Wednesday endured a tough campaign with restrictions on their squad and relegation was always an inevitability but they did earn some pride in getting themselves to zero points with a defeat of West Bromwich Albion at Hillsborough on the final day of the campaign.

The Owls embarked upon an impressive summer transfer window as they began their rebuilt as a club over the summer with 18 new signings and things had started brightly on the pitch.

Their ceiling for League One remains high, as shown by a 7-2 win over Bromley and a 5-0 victory against AFC Wimbledon at Hillsborough, but fortunate victories on the road had begun to turn to defeats as the season went on.

A 2-0 loss at South Yorkshire rivals Doncaster Rovers was the end of the road for Pedersen and Wednesday have begun a managerial search with plenty of names mooted to replace the Dane.

Gary Rowett not tipped to excite Sheffield Wednesday supporters

One name that has previously been linked with the Sheffield Wednesday job in the past is that of former Birmingham City manager Gary Rowett.

Rowett was most recently in charge of Leicester City last season but he failed to steer The Foxes clear of Championship relegation last season, much as he had failed to do so the previous year in his second stint at Birmingham, too.

Rowett, now a free agent, may well feel like a good fit for Wednesday to many outsiders but he is a name that FLW’s Sheffield Wednesday Fan Pundit Patrick McKenna believes would not excite supporters.

Patrick says: “I think Gary Rowett is one of those managers who has done the rounds and I just don’t think his stock is that high right now.

“It was probably highest when he was at Birmingham the first time around but it’s not a name that particularly excites you but it generally does creep up when these opportunities arise, when Wednesday are looking for a new manager.

“He’s not a terrible manager. He’s not an amazing manager but I just don’t know if he is the sort of man that would fit the project that Simon Wilson has at Wednesday and I doubt he would overly excite the fanbase.”

Gary Rowett’s managerial career has tailed off

Having finished his career at Burton Albion, Gary Rowett began his managerial career with The Brewers in 2012 and he helped steer them into the League Two play-offs in his first full season in charge after initially taking over as the caretaker boss the season before.

After losing to Bradford City in those play-offs, Rowett and Burton then succumbed to a play-off final defeat to Fleetwood Town a year later before he was poached by Birmingham in October 2014.

A former Blues player, Rowett took charge of a Birmingham side that had avoided relegation in dramatic fashion on the final day of the previous season before taking over at a side that had won just two of their opening 14 matches and had been beaten 8-0 by AFC Bournemouth before his appointment.

Impressively, he steered them to a top half finish that season before repeating that tenth placed finish in what would be his only full season at St Andrew’s.

That is because in December 2016, Rowett was relieved of his duties by new Trillion Trophy Asia ownership group to be replaced by Gianfranco Zola, despite Birmingham sitting seventh in the Championship.

Rowett returned to management in the spring of 2017 when taking charge of another former club as a player, Derby County. He would guide them to ninth in his opening couple of months in charge before leading The Rams into the play-offs in what was again to be his first and only full season.

Unlike a harsh removal from his position as was the case at Birmingham, he became one of many to be chewed up and spat out by the post-Premier League Stoke City machine, poached in the summer of 2018 and sacked in January 2019.

After ten months without a club, Rowett began what would be a four-year stint at Millwall, where he would help them earn four successive top half finishes in the Championship before departing in October 2023.

Since leaving The Den, Rowett’s stock as a manager, as Patrick touches upon, has dropped off a fair bit – overseeing Birmingham and Leicester being relegated, either side of a year-long stint at Oxford United in which he did help The U’s overachieve in avoiding relegation in the 2024-25 campaign before being sacked in the December of last season with the club in 22nd – where they would eventually finish the campaign.

Having been heavily involved in three Championship relegations in three seasons, Rowett perhaps needed some time out of the game and it could well be he rediscovers his touch from previous clubs – but it may actually be a bit of a gamble for Wednesday to hope for that.