Sheffield Wednesday-focused Twitter account @LiveSwfc recently posted a tweet asking the club’s supporters to share where they think it all went wrong for ex-Owls man George Hirst.
This tweet includes a link to an article from Yorkshire Live that discusses Hirst and his departure from Hillsborough, which they explain occurred in “acrimonious circumstances”.
A contractual dispute between him and the club led to Hirst being “frozen out” by Wednesday towards the end of his spell with the club before he left to join Belgian side OH Leuven on a free transfer in the summer of 2018. He subsequently departed from the Belgian club to join Leicester City a year later.
It may be fair to say that Hirst’s departure from Sheffield Wednesday didn’t occur in ideal circumstances for the young attacker. However, some Owls fans have been responding to @LiveSwfc’s post by sharing some criticism of Hirst himself, with some describing him as greedy. Meanwhile, other Owls fans have stated that they believe the young attacker was badly advised.
Read the responses of some Wednesday fans to this post in the tweets below.
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Everywhere. Badly advised badly treated and badly managed. Opportunity missed
— Lee van Gelder (@DutchMcLovin) May 26, 2020
Greed
— Rob Cowlishaw (@harrykins) May 26, 2020
Greed. Pure greed.
— Andy Clayton (@AndrewClayton93) May 26, 2020
Did Sheffield Wednesday mismanage George Hirst?YES, THEY DID
NO, THEY DIDN'T
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Greed
— Gadget Girl (@gadgetgirl73) May 26, 2020
I think he was ill-advised, got greedy and thought he was bigger than the club.
— WAWAW (@nanjayman) May 26, 2020
Very different scoring goals at U23 level
— AstonOwl (@OwlAston) May 26, 2020
What do we think?
This article explains that Hirst had scored an impressive total of 40 goals for Wednesday’s youth development sides in 2017, however, it also goes on to explain that he endured a more difficult run of things during his stint in Belgium, though he is now starting to get “his goalscoring career back on track” with Leicester City’s youth sides.
Considering that he had been ‘frozen out’ by the Owls prior to his departure from the club, it may be fair to say that this decision from the club may have been an example of a youth player being mismanaged, regardless of the contractual dispute between him and the club. With that in mind, some responsibility should be placed on Wednesday for any impact that their decision to freeze Hirst out might have had on the player’s development.