‘It’s up to us’ – Sheffield Wednesday skipper makes no bones about Owls target

The Owls picked up a huge win over Blackburn Rovers over the weekend, securing a 3-1 victory that saw them climb out of the Championship bottom three and finally take their fate into their own hands.

Now, with games against West Bromwich Albion and Sunderland standing between themselves and another season in the second tier, the Wednesday skipper has explained that they’ve ticked one box off on their list of targets – they just need to do the same with a couple more.

Bannan, who played his 400th game for Wednesday on Sunday, was proud of the way his team rallied after losing their lead in a matter of moments and losing two centre backs to injury, and believed that their second half showing was proof of what they can do.

“We had a really strong start in the game,” he told The Star. “We pressed high and won the ball back quite a lot, and got the goal - but we fell asleep at got punished. After that it was all about not getting carried away, not panicking - it was back to square one, really. Like it was 0-0. We probably gave the ball away too much by being frantic, and you could see both teams were a bit nervous. It wasn’t a great game.

“But we got in at half time, regrouped, and spoke about having nothing to lose and everything to gain if we could win this game. So we wanted to go for it, and you saw a different team in the second half. We were composed at the right times, calm in the right areas, and got our goals. After that it was a professional performance to see it out.”

He went on to add, “We spoke after the Stoke game about setting targets, and the main target was to win all three games - we felt that if we can do that then we’d be very unlucky not to stay in the league. We’ve ticked off one, we’ve got another two left, and it’s in our own hands - but we thought it was in our own hands anyway even though we were behind on points.

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“We know we’re capable of going on and winning these games and getting out of it, and we’ve done the first job - it’s up to us what happens to this club this season.”

Wednesday play the Baggies at 3pm on Saturday in their final home game of the season, and with a sell-out already confirmed at Hillsborough – with more tickets possibly on the way – the Owls’ 12th man will be loud and proud once again as they look to try and spur them on to victory.