While many Wednesday fans celebrated the end of Dejphon Chansiri’s deeply unpopular reign as owner on October 24 last year, it was also a day of huge uncertainty over what would come next.

An American consortium, Arise Capital Partners, led by David and Michael Storch along with Tom Costin, ultimately took control of the club in May of this year, crucially managing to avoid a 15-point deduction to ensure they started life in League One with a clean slate.

One of their first moves was to bring in Bruce, formerly the chief business officer at Sunderland and a Major League Soccer marketing chief before that.

He grew up at a time when Wednesday were a Premier League force and a challenger for domestic cups, graced by star names such as Chris Waddle, David Hirst and John Sheridan.

He sees no reason why, with responsible leadership and patience, the club cannot reclaim that status.

“This club was always a top 10 club in this country, and it can be a top 10 club again. This club is like a rocket ship,” he told the Press Association.

“One of the first things (new sporting director) Simon Wilson said in his interview for the job was ‘Sheffield Wednesday is probably the OG of sleeping giants’, and he’s right.

“This is about having a go, but doing it in the right way. I can’t think of another club like Sheffield Wednesday anywhere in Europe where there’s this opportunity to get your hands on it, try and shape it in a way which hopefully is going to be incredibly beneficial in the long term for so many people.

“As English people we have this tendency not to talk about the journey till it’s really almost done, and let’s wait until it’s formed or it’s almost out in the world. But I’ve worked so long in America, and the owners are Americans. They want to talk about journeys as soon as an idea is out of their mouths. And Americans are so good at that, and I don’t see anything wrong with that.

“We need to articulate to people, ‘it’s going to be bumpy, but it’s going to be fun as hell’.

“And it definitely isn’t going to be linear, because football is not linear. It’s full of ups and downs and all kinds of unknowns. But it’ll be amazing, and we’ll always intend to do the right thing by everyone.”

On-field success had been the obsession of the previous owner too, but the new owners found a club which had been neglected off it.

Bruce said: “You pick up a stone and you see something (under it) you need to resolve, but then you see something else, and you’re like, ‘I can’t just put the stone down now. I’ve seen it. I’ve got to do this right’.

“What happened in the past was you just never picked up the stone, or you saw (underneath) it and put it back down.”

Leaving no stone unturned has resulted, Bruce estimates, in £11million worth of work being done at the stadium and the training ground since May.

“It’s been things like fixing stands, fixing roofs, so fans can go to a game and not have water leak on them,” he said.

“This stadium has water and electricity coming into it, but it’s not distributed around the building in the right way that can enable us to do things like flush toilets in the second half of a game, have warm showers after a certain number of players have had a shower, get water just in the areas you need to get water into.

“So we put big new water tankers and piping around the whole stadium which enables us to have water in the building in the way we need, whether cold, whether hot. None of that stuff is making anyone any money. It’s just stuff that had to be fixed.”

Bruce is adamant the Storch family see Wednesday as a “long term” investment, adding: “The club has really got under their skin – really, really quickly.

“One of the things that really got them motivated about this football club early on was around the health of the region, the feeling that the health of the region was affected by the fact this club could disappear.

“That’s because of the belonging and the connection these fans have with this club that’s multi-generational, that’s been in their family forever. Their families’ identity is wrapped up in this football club. (The new owners) realised how important this club is as an absolute pillar of a community.”