Danny Rohl spoke of his pride at his Sheffield Wednesday side’s achievement after a 2-0 win over Sunderland confirmed the club’s survival in the Sky Bet Championship.
Wednesday looked to be down and out when they won just one of their opening 19 league matches, with Rohl’s appointment in mid-October a last roll of the dice.
However, the former Bayern Munich assistant has overseen a remarkable turnaround, with the Owls losing just three of their last 14 matches to haul themselves to safety.
With all of their relegation rivals winning, they needed to win at the Stadium of Light on the final day to avoid the drop, with first-half goals from Liam Palmer and Josh Windass securing their success.
Rohl said: “I do not think it is normal to stay in the league when you have just won one game in 19 matchdays from the beginning of the season. It says a lot about the mentality of our players that they have turned things around.
“I have to say ‘thank you’ to our chairman because he is the guy who gave me the opportunity for my first job as a manager. We should not forget this, and we should be proud of the whole club.
“There has been a real togetherness in the six months that I have been here, and we all have to be happy and proud about what we have achieved.
“When I arrived, the players were open-minded and we raised our intensity straight away. We had ups and downs, but we always showed a good reaction.
“We said we maybe needed eight wins with 16 games to go, but if you look now, eight wins would not have been enough.
“We took nine wins from those 16 games, and I think the form table from those games shows us in the top three or four in the league. That says a lot.”
While Rohl was able to reflect on a job well done, Sunderland’s interim head coach, Mike Dodds, admitted his side had underperformed badly over the course of the season.
The Black Cats’ season imploded after Tony Mowbray was dismissed, with Michael Beale failing to impress in his brief managerial tenure and Dodds unable to turn things around in his 13 games in temporary control.
Dodds said: “I’ve said to the group that we are where we are in the table and we deserve it, to be brutally honest I don’t think the table lies.
“We haven’t given the fans enough to cheer about, not just in my tenure across the entire season. There have been too many games this season where we haven’t lost the game, I feel like we’ve handed it to the opposition.
“I felt that today, in terms of two goals that were so avoidable and then in front of goal, it’s been a real consistent theme across the season that we’ve been really snatchy in front of goal and not looked comfortable.
“The table doesn’t lie so there’s some real learnings to be had from everyone and I think the group are clear that there are certain things next season that have to be non-negotiables.
“As players and staff, we won’t accept another season like that.”
