Sheffield Wednesday's Barry Bannan ready to silence critics after embarrassing miss against Leyton Orient
How did he miss?
Barry Bannan says his open-goal miss against Leyton Orient has ‘fired’ him up.
The 36-year-old, who returned to Sheffield Wednesday this summer after a short stint at Millwall last season, forced a mistake and rounded Orient goalkeeper Nathan Baxter. But with the goal gaping, the Scot somehow hit rolled the ball into the side-netting, leaving him with his head in his hands.
With almost 500 appearances for Wednesday in 10 years, everyone expected him to score. Commentators even reported that he had netted, only to see seconds later that he had struck it wide.
The surprising miss has gone viral on social media since Saturday, with plenty of rival supporters taking the opportunity to give him some stick. But they weren’t the only ones, with the Scot revealing his own team-mates have been teasing him as well.
“I've had quite a lot, to be fair,” he told Sky Sports. “It's all deserved to be honest. It was it was a really bad miss. I think I was celebrating before it actually went into the net, so that's a big lesson learned.”
However, opposition fans should be wary, because Bannan will be using it as motivation to score at the right end soon enough, with Bradford City next up at Hillsborough on Thursday night in front of the Sky Sports cameras and a crowd of 32,000 expected.
He added: “Obviously every player loves to score goals, and that was a big, easy chance that I had to get off the mark for the season. So it's fired me up a little bit now for the next coming games to try and get on the score- sheet and get off the mark. But yeah, it was a really bad miss. I'm just so happy that it never came back to haunt me. In the end, it was all about three points, which kind of made it a lot easier on the journey home for me.”