Barry Bannan returned to Scotland to aid his Sheffield Wednesday recovery efforts

Bannan doesn’t miss many games for Wednesday, but has been out of action in 2023 so far as he looks to recover from a knock that he picked up in the final game of last year.

Now, having returned to training last week, it would appear that the 33-year-old is nearing his return to action in League One, and he’s revealed some of the work that he’s been doing in order to aid his recovery.

He did admit, though, that he doesn’t like the gym element.

In his programme notes for the Fleetwood game, the Owls skipper said, "I had a week away to rest. I went up to Scotland and that helped me mentally because the second time being out injured in a short period of time was annoying.

"I've since done a week in the gym and now I'm back outside so it's not so bad. I don't really like the gym to be honest so I'm quite lucky that both times I've been quick to get out on the grass.

"The two games against Fleetwood and Port Vale were in a short space of time and maybe that didn't help, looking back. I wanted to play, when I'm fit I want to play. I felt fine going into it and if you feel alright it's hard to say, 'I don't want to go out there and play.'

"How can you go to our manager and physios and say, 'I don't think I should play?' You would never do that if your body felt fine."

It remains to be seen at this point in time which game ‘Baz’ will be hoping to get back for, but with the club in a rich vein of form at present there will certainly be no rush to try and get him back in earlier than he should be.

Darren Moore has said previously that he wants his captain back to stay when he does return, and if that requires a bit longer on the sidelines then so be it.

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