Tears, regrets and Bord truth - Barry Bannan reveals all on Sheffield Wednesday exit and re-marriage
Barry Bannan and Sheffield Wednesday have re-married. It’s been an emotional few months. Alex Miller spoke to him from their training camp in Budapest.
Turning away from a separate interview in the mezzanine lobby of the Globall Hotel in Telki, The Star sees one of Sheffield Wednesday’s new signings sat in a comfortable chair.
He’s flanked by two other journalists and the mood is relaxed. There’s perhaps no other Sheffield Wednesday footballer who has notched up the number of interviews with local media down the years and there’s a familiarity in the air that is comforting. Barry Bannan is back holding court with a Wednesday badge in his chest.
It’s a new badge of course, designed to usher-in a new era at the club he left in a state of whirlwind emotion almost six months ago to the day. There are other differences. Bannan looks somehow sharper, leaner and more chiselled, the sun rays having made their visit to his Scottish skin to leave a halfway house of tan and pink. He puts his fitness levels down to a summer playing padel. Above all, the difference appears to be that he looks happy.
Engagements with the midfielder towards the end of his initial 10-year stint with Wednesday were often terse and full of lead. On the pitch too, Bannan carried the demeanour of a man with a club strapped to his back. Given the circumstances, media appearances were rare across the club but in those engagements, even after the club was put into administration, he seemed unusually terse and loaded with stress. Chance meetings in and out of stadiums delivered the look of a man consumed by the job of captaining a club in crisis. Understandably so.
His return, in the end, dragged a touch. It was signposted from the moment his then-club Millwall exited the play-offs and, in truth, some time before that. With the Storch bid moving to take on the Wednesday project, the whispers were that Bannan’s second marriage to Sheffield Wednesday felt inevitable.
When a deal was agreed and ready to be completed, his first action was to tell his young daughter Elsie, whose connection with Wednesday is well-documented. The tears that enveloped her reaction to daddy leaving the club all those months ago returned, though his little girl was quick to reassure him that ‘these are happy tears, not sad tears’.
Time away from the family home in Nottingham took a toll on the tight-knit Bannan quartet and circumstances down south weren’t easy. Bannan was used mainly from the bench and showed glimpses of the quality that has made him one of the all-time great Championship players. But it never felt right, straight from the getgo; for the man himself as much as those watching on in bemusement from South Yorkshire.
“There was emotion in my house, definitely,” he said, reflecting on a return to the club he calls home. “As good as it was with the lads at Millwall, it was difficult. It never felt right after a few weeks for me, personally.
“I realised quite quickly that it was maybe not the right decision. I tried to give my all, as you do as a professional, because we were in a very good place in Millwall at the time. I was getting on with it and trying my best to get that club promoted. But I think the emotion in coming back was more relief for me and my family. Because once you leave, sometimes you don't get lucky to come back. I was just delighted that I had the opportunity.
“I kept doing everything I could to make it happen. Not only for me, but for my family as well. This is their home and it’s all the kids really know. I was more relieved than anything that I got the chance to come back.”
With Bannan sat back in Wednesday blue, the emotion of Ashton Gate somehow feels a lifetime ago. So much has changed for all involved since the wee Scottish man tearfully waved goodbye to his public at Bristol City, a sold-out travelling support bellowing his song from the first whistle to the moment he trudged off the pitch to the solemn respect of Owls and Robins alike. His wife Chloe now jokes that he didn’t show as much emotion on their wedding day.
It has to be said that the timing of his decision to leave confused many. Having signed a new deal in the August on lowered terms, the feeling was of a captain going down with his ship no matter the issues that lay ahead. Circumstances ultimately conspired to make staying untenable in his mind, Wednesday nervously edging towards the ownership of a James Bord-led consortium with concern rising as to their plans. Add to that the then-and-there football circumstances, Bannan left for Bermondsey.
”I’d been in contact with the preferred bidder at the time, being the captain,” he told The Star. “I had to ask questions of where they saw the club going and how it was going to go for the following season. And long story short, I didn't agree with it. After the years that we had here, the way it was run then, there's only so much you can take as a group of players. I didn't feel it was the right fit for the club.
“And so I had a big decision to make whether I stay, get on with that - or I had the option of Millwall. Obviously Millwall were fighting for promotion and the World Cup was coming up, so I felt maybe I could put myself in the window for that if I could go and do really well there. Obviously it never worked out like that in the end.”
Alongside one or two other Wednesday figures, Bannan had been disappointed that the bid led by now-chairman David Storch had not succeeded in earning preferred bidder status at the first time of asking. Friendly conversations around the initial round of bidding before Christmas had left him and others ‘rooting’ for the Arise bid above others and, as it was in the fanbase, there was a sense of bewilderment around the club’s outlook aside Team Bord. The collapse of the Bord bid was quietly celebrated from the Hillsborough changing room to a flat in East London.
As alluded to in The Star in recent weeks, an outline agreement was in place that said the Lions would not stand in the way of a Bannan switch back to Hillsborough should the Scot and Wednesday want to make it happen. Senior figures at Millwall appreciated the stance of the midfield man and though the understanding is that nothing was written into contract, the agreement was upheld.
“I was holding off the whole of January basically, because I obviously didn't want to leave,” Bannan reflected. “A big part of it was an agreement with Millwall that I could go if I didn't enjoy it. I could leave if I had the option of coming back here. So it kind of worked in a way, perfectly for me with David (Storch) coming in and getting the preferred bid in. I'd spoken to David when I was still at Sheffield Wednesday after the Norwich game. And we got on really well and kept in contact. So it all worked itself out perfectly.”
The deal was confirmed after several weeks of speculation and asked whether there was ever a moment he felt nervous as to whether it would compete, Bannan replied: “No, not really. It probably dragged on longer than everyone expected. It got out quite a while ago. Ideally I’d have liked it done a lot quicker. But as you can understand with what was happening in the club at the minute, the changes and everything that's needed to get it done in a short space of time before the season starts, it was understandable. But no, I think it was ever in any danger.”
Gone for just a few short months, he wanders back in to a club ‘reborn’. These are the early stages of Wednesday’s American reboot but there is a confidence things are turning in the right direction, with new players arriving to strengthen the squad and structures put in place to support a much-needed and long-overdue correction of decades of mediocrity.
The task ahead remains enormous, but confidence is growing within the club that an environment is being curated for long-term success. From a player’s point of view, Bannan sees the ushering-in of their new era to be a welcome change for a changing room that has had the perils of mismanagement hanging over them for too long.
“I think it makes our job a lot easier for the players to concentrate on what we're here to do and that's to win games,” he smiled. “The chairman (Storch) has been amazing in terms of bringing people in to job titles that we've never been privileged to in this club over the years I've been here. He's got a lot of help, we've had a lot of help as players and he's given us everything to go and be successful. As players that's all we want because when you get home at night you can look for excuses and if the excuses are there it makes it a lot easier for players not to take accountability.
“But this club now, there's none of that, there's no blame, we can't blame anyone. We've got everything that we need now to go and be successful on the pitch and as I say that's always players looking at what's at the door. As long as you've got that around you and the club moving in the right way, then it's down to us.”
After a few more questions, Bannan shakes hands and wanders down the stairs to re-join his teammates in some downtime before their second training session of the day. So much has changed at Sheffield Wednesday in the six months Barry Bannan was down south. Yet in some ways, it feels as if he’s never been away.