Sheffield Wednesday must have transfer regret involving Nottingham Forest, West Ham - Owls missed out on millions | OneFootball

Michail Antonio was solid for Sheffield Wednesday, but they’ll have some regrets over their handling of him

Michail Antonio is now an established Premier League striker, but that wasn’t the case when he first signed for Sheffield Wednesday.

He joined the Owls first on loan, before agreeing a permanent deal ahead of the 2012/13 season.

The Jamaica international had two more solid seasons for the Yorkshire side, before they decided to cash-in and sell him to Nottingham Forest.

It seemed like a good deal at the time, but hindsight suggests Wednesday moved too soon.

Antonio impressed at Hillsborough Stadium

Antonio first went to Wednesday on loan from Reading, the last of a series of loans from the Berkshire club, while the Owls were in League One.

Helping with their promotion campaign, he netted five goals and provided two assists in just 14 appearances.

Naturally, it tempted Wednesday to table a permanent offer for the then-22-year-old, thought to be in the region of £700,000.

He kicked on even further, making 18 goal contributions in the Championship in his first permanent season, dropping to nine the next term in a disrupted campaign for the forward.

Nottingham Forest may be the real winners with Antonio

In his two Championship seasons with the Owls, he had performed extremely well and proven himself capable of the level, but he was far from clocking freakish numbers.

Therefore, when Forest came in with a £1.5m bid in 2014, the opportunity to double their money on Antonio was an offer too good to refuse.

The Owls clearly thought the time was right to cash in on the attacker; they were wrong.

Antonio’s solitary full season with Forest proved to be one of his best, seeing him bag 14 goals and lay on 12 assists in a team that struggled to reach beyond mid-table that year.

Those in the Premier League had seen enough, provoking West Ham United to table a £7million bid on deadline day just over a year later.

Forest had an incredible season out of Antonio and then flipped him after 12 months for almost five times what they paid; it was an incredible bit of business.

A double whammy of regrets for Wednesday

Not only did Wednesday pass up on a top-quality forward – more accustomed to operating on the wing before moving up front later in his career – but they also missed out on cashing in on his true value.

What will hurt even more is that it’s not as if he moved up a division and kicked on, increasing his value, it was a simple sideways move to a division rival.

Wednesday actually finished a place higher than Forest in the season Antonio spent there, so everything he achieved there, and the subsequent fee he went for, would have been possible at Hillsborough.

However, hindsight is a wonderful thing with these scenarios; it seems unconscionable that Wednesday would let Antonio go so cheaply, given everything he went on to achieve in his career, but the Owls were not to know that at the time.

Nevertheless, they’ll look back on their decision to sell Antonio in 2014, and the money they left on the table in the deal, with more than a few regrets.