4 hours ago
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Sheffield Wednesday will auction off two inauspicious golden elephant statues in a bid to raise money at all costs after the club entered administration last Friday, according to reports.
The Owls were handed a mammoth 12-point deduction by the EFL and now sit on minus six in the Championship standings with the threat of relegation to League One ramped up by the decision.
But the club has also been wrested from the hands of loathed former owner Dejphon Chansiri, whom supporters have been protesting since well before the start of the season.
The Thai businessman bought the club in 2015, but towards the end of his reign at Hillsborough oversaw a period of financial chaos which saw Sheffield Wednesday sanctioned in the transfer market as players went unpaid.
Now, in a bid to raise money for staff and the club's creditors, two statues bought at the start of Chansiri's ownership in a bid to bring good luck to Wednesday will be sold off in an ironic twist.
Chansiri installed the elephants on either side of the main entrance to the stadium's South Stand in 2016, with golden elephants representing strength and power, as well as good fortune, in Thai culture.
Sheffield Wednesday's administrators are considering auctioning off the golden elephants installed by former owner Dejphon Chansiri
Fans have already started removing the white seats which spelled out Chansiri's surname
In recent months, the elephants had been moved inside in a bid to protect them from the possibility of incensed fans stealing or vandalising the statues.
'The last I heard about the elephants, a staff member said that they had put them in a cupboard somewhere,' Kris Wigfield, who is one of the three administrators at Begbies Traynor now running the club, told the Times.
'I think putting them up for auction is definitely a possibility. We'll see what comes in the next week'.
Fans have been out on mass in a bid to boost Wednesday's coffers, with over £200,000 claimed to have been spent in the club shop since a public appeal for investment, and thousands of fans flocking to Hillsborough as ticket prices were slashed to £20 to £30 for adults.
Inside the stadium, Chansiri's legacy is already in the process of being erased, with supporters volunteering to rip out the white plastic seats which spelled out his surname in the North Stand.
The club have already replaced the first two seats with blue ones from the lower tier of the West Stand, with a view to replacing all of the missing letters by their next home game, against Norwich City.
27,261 fans attended their game against Oxford United this weekend, with the club appearing to poke fun at Chansiri ahead of kick-off.
Before the game, a message was displayed on the big screens inside the ground. It first read: 'Rebooting...' before changing to: 'Removal successfully completed. Contacting administrator to begin recovery...'
A number of interested parties are thought to already be in touch with those handling the sale, and also monitoring the situation is former Newcastle owner Mike Ashley.
Formal expressions of interest are unlikely until administrators open a data room, which will attempt to outline the financial picture at Hillsborough to potential buyers.
Those who wish to gain access to that information will need to show bank account details proving that they have sufficient funds and are a serious player.
