The two clubs Henrik Pedersen turned down to stay at Sheffield Wednesday revealed | OneFootball

Sheffield Wednesday have announced that the Dane is their new boss.

New Sheffield Wednesday boss Henrik Pedersen turned down the opportunity to join a Premier League and a Ligue 1 side in order to takeover from Danny Rohl at Hillsborough.

Amid the uncertainty around the future of Wednesday's former German boss, Pedersen showed up. He was there on the first day of pre-season training when Rohl wasn't, and he quickly emerged as the club's preferred candidate to replace the 36-year-old should he get his desired exit.

Rohl did leave, not to join another club, but mutually, and the Owls moved fast to try and get Pedersen confirmed as his successor.

Henrik Pedersen rejected top flight offers to stay with Sheffield Wednesday

Now it has been announced that the 47-year-old former RB Leipzig assistant will lead the currently slender-looking Wednesday side into the 2025/26 campaign, the team's supporters will be able to breathe a sigh of relief because they weren't the only ones who wanted the coach this summer.

Andy Giddings has revealed that Pedersen had the opportunity to join either Brentford or French first division side Strasbourg this summer, but chose to stick around at Hillsborough. Interest from other clubs in England and on the continent was known, but it's only now that we know exactly who was after Roh's former assistant.

The Bees' new head coach, Keith Andrews, wanted the 47-year-old to join his new backroom staff at the Gtech Community Stadium. It had also been reported by Bold that a club from Pedersen's homeland, Aalborg, wanted him to be their manager.

Many of the Wednesday players weren't keen on Rohl coming back and leading them after his summer of trying to leave the Owls and his late return to pre-season preparations, especially while Pedersen was preparing those that had returned to Middlewood Road.

Henrik Pedersen gives Sheffield Wednesday the best chance of survival

Amid the chaos that has surrounded the club this summer, the slim pieces of reassurance for supporters that have popped up have come from the players that have shown their loyalty to the team.

Pedersen and some of the other coaches have done the same. Despite many of them not being paid their May and June wages on time, they showed up to work to give the club the best chance of surviving next season.

The odds are very much stacked against the Owls. With a tiny squad, a transfer ban until 2027 and a current embargo from the EFL for non-payment of transfer fees to other clubs, their ability to form a team capable of doing anything next term is limited, to say the least.

What they may be able to hold onto is a siege mentality, an us against the world attitude. With Rohl in charge, that wouldn't have been possible because of his attempts to jump ship. Pedersen never did.

In a message to the club's fans, he said: "Is this going to be easy? No! We are maybe in ‘rough waters’ at the moment but as a proud Dane I can tell you that like our Viking ancestors, stormy seas don’t bother us too much. You have to get used to it, to weather the storm to get to calmer waters."

He can inspire that desire in the players to pull off the impossible in a way that his old German boss would've struggled to do.