Sheffield Wednesday: Josh Windass decision could end up backfiring on Dejphon Chansiri | OneFootball

Sheffield Wednesday have offered Josh Windass a year's contract, but there are questions over whether this was the right thing to do.

Sheffield Wednesday face an uncertain summer, with rumours circulating that manager Danny Rohl is set to leave the club, but they have secured the services of Josh Windass for at least one more year.

Wednesday finished last season in 12th place in the Championship, a significant improvement on a year earlier. But with protests against the club's owner towards the end of the season and speculation that the manager is set to leave the club, it seems likely to be an extremely busy summer indeed.

But one decision that the club have taken is to take up their option to extend the contract of attacking midfielder Josh Windass by another year, as confirmed by the club's retained and released list for the end of the 2024/25 season, joining forwards Anthony Musaba and Michael Smith in having an option triggered, whilst new deals have been offered to Barry Bannan, Akin Famewo and Callum Paterson.

Josh Windass has been a success for Sheffield Wednesday

Josh Windass joined Sheffield Wednesday at the end of the January 2020 transfer from Wigan Athletic on a half-season on loan, making the move permanent at the end of that summer's transfer window.

Over five and a half seasons with the club, he's made 153 League appearances for Wednesday, scoring 43 goals. He was a critical component of the Wednesday team that was promoted back to the Championship in 2023, scoring the winning goal in the play-off final against Barnsley at Wembley.

He clearly still holds value to the club on the pitch too - the 13 League goals he scored in 2024/25 was his highest end-of-season tally since joining the South Yorkshire outfit, while his 44 appearances were also the most he'd made in one campaign, putting injury issues from recent years behind him.

Sheffield Wednesday may live to regret Josh Windass contract decision after his public comments

Windass is now 31 years of age, and there has been interest in him from elsewhere, and from some slightly surprising places.

In January, he told talkSPORT that he had received an offer from the Brazilian giants Santos, who were at that time managed by Pedro Caixinha, with whom he'd worked at Rangers.

Considering that Caixinha was sacked by the club in April following a winless start to their season - Brazilian club football hires and fires its managers at a speed that remains dizzying, even to English eyes - it's entirely possible that Windass doesn't regret investigating that further in the slightest.

Caixinha had previously attempted to sign Windass in 2022, as well. While managing the Argentinian club Athletic Talleres, he made a bid which was reported to be in the region of £1m to sign the player, which was rejected by Sheffield Wednesday.

But at the end of the January transfer window, MLS journalist Tom Bogert spoke to Windass about the possibility of moving to the USA. Windass's response was: "Yeah of course. … In the future, I have no doubt I’ll play in MLS at some point." As Bogert pointed out, the player's wife is from Chicago.

Perhaps most importantly though, given Windass has been so open about exploring a different country and culture, and he's not getting any younger, for him to reveal in February that the contract option that Wednesday have ended up triggering was "more or less" the player's decision, it means one of two things.

Either Windass is happy to stay at Wednesday for one more year, run his deal down and then move on from Hillsborough in 2026, or conversely, the Owls hierarchy may have triggered the option to try and either keep him against his will, or to try and secure a transfer fee for his services this summer.

Windass' father Dean seemed pretty sure that he had played his final game for Sheffield Wednesday at the end of the season, so the contract decision is somewhat of a curveball - it could now potentially unsettle Windass, who, when looking into all the evidence, was perhaps ready to move on and ply his trade elsewhere.

Wednesday surely won't want a potentially unhappy Windass on their books, so it will be interesting to see what unfolds over the next few weeks as we head into the summer transfer window.