£4m Sheffield Wednesday transfer was a disaster from start to finish: View | OneFootball

It has been a tough season for Sheffield Wednesday in the Championship.

The Owls were promoted from League One last season after beating Barnsley in the play-off final at Wembley in May, but they are in danger of making an immediate return to the third tier.

Wednesday made their worst start to a season in their history, resulting in the sacking of Xisco Munoz in October, but performances and results have improved significantly under Danny Rohl, offering hope that survival can be achieved.

It has also been a turbulent campaign off-the-pitch for the Owls, with protests against owner Dejphon Chansiri increasing in recent months.

A lack of investment in the transfer window has been one of the main causes of Wednesday supporters' anger, with many of their new signings this season arriving on either free transfers or loans.

This is in contrast to the early stages of Chansiri's reign, when significant transfer fees were spent on players as he attempted to lead the club to the Premier League in his first two years at the helm.

There were some notable successes in transfer market for the Owls, but there were also some high-profile failures, and perhaps no signing was more underwhelming than midfielder Almen Abdi, who joined the club from Watford in July 2016.

Almen Abdi will go down as one of Sheffield Wednesday's worst-ever signings

Abdi arrived at Hillsborough – for a reported fee of around £4 million – on the same day as Wednesday completed the permanent signing of his Watford team-mate Daniel Pudil, who had spent the previous season on loan at the club.

After losing to Hull City in the play-off final a few months earlier, it was a double announcement that had Owls supporters dreaming of another promotion push.

Recruiting from Watford had been productive for Wednesday, with star striker Fernando Forestieri also having made the move from Vicarage Road, and the signing of Abdi was seen as a big coup after the starring role he had played during his four years with the Hornets.

Abdi began the 2016-17 season as a regular for the Owls, but injuries quickly began to plague him, and he ended the campaign having scored just once in 16 appearances.

The 37-year-old's absence was not too damaging for Wednesday as they secured a fourth-placed finish, losing to Huddersfield Town on penalties in the play-off semi-finals, but supporters were frustrated that they were unable to see their marquee signing in action on a regular basis.

played just 23 games for the club.

Sheffield Wednesday tried to sell Almen Abdi but couldn't

Reflecting on his time at Hillsborough, Abdi revealed that he had a poor relationship with head coach Carlos Carvalhal.

"The coach didn’t help me very much because I’d play two games then the third, which I didn’t play well, so he’d drop me, then drop me again and after a while, you lose confidence," Abdi told The Athletic in 2021.

"I needed a manager who trusted me, who believed in me, who pushed me. He (Carvalhal) didn’t do that. He’s energetic, he’s enthusiastic. He’s a really good coach and he did well. But he didn’t trust me. He didn’t like me and I didn’t like him that much. So it was really hard mentally. I was asking myself why? What have I done?"

The midfielder said that he "asked to leave a few times, literally every six months", but The Athletic claim that while Wednesday would have been willing to sanction his departure, "there was no serious interest" in his services.

Abdi's lack of impact on the pitch was disappointing, but his transfer fee and high wages will have contributed to the six-point deduction the club received in the 2020-21 season, resulting in their relegation to League One.

There are plenty of players from the Carvalhal era that have written their names into Wednesday history, but Abdi is one that will not be remembered fondly by Owls supporters.