Four years into his Sheffield Wednesday career - what does this season hold for Adam Reach?

The flying winger-slash-forward-slash-midfielder struggled to hit the hit the performance highs of previous campaigns during 2019/20 and earlier this year for the first time showed hints as wear and tear, missing all of February and March with a toe injury in what was his longest spell out through injury at Wednesday.

He played a part in their return to football from the coronavirus suspension, featuring in all but two of their nine matches, but of those appearances he started only two and none last more than the 67 minutes he played in defeat at Swansea.

How was he on Saturday?

With Wednesday’s options up front limited heading into Saturday’s season-opening Carabao Cup clash at Walsall, Reach may well be asked to take an attacking role as one of the two central forwards in Garry Monk’s favoured 3-5-2 formation.

He did so at the weekend, starting the 0-0 draw with Leicester off Jordan Rhodes. As ever, Reach worked hard, but like the rest of his teammates struggled to get much going to truly threaten the Foxes backline.

Owls bss Garry Monk admitted that the pre-season match, played at the end of Wednesday’s training camp at Loughborough University, was as much about getting minutes into the legs of his players as it was the performance or result.

Coming back fresh?

One of the players that would have benefited from the run out more than most is Reach, who is on the comeback trail of that elongated lay-off. In his previous seasons with the Owls the 27-year-old played more than anyone else and was perhaps due a spell watching on.

In his debut 2016/17 season, including two games in which he was rested, the 26-year-old played in 92 per cent of all minutes played by Sheffield Wednesday in the league that season.

Of 4140 minutes of normal time played by the Owls in the league in 2017/18, Reach missed 72, meaning he was on the field more than 98 per cent of the time. From the first kick of the Championship season, Reach had to wait until the end of February for a single second’s break in the league.

In 2018/19 he missed three of the final four matches through injury. Up until that point he played in 98.2 per cent of Owls action. The fact is that given Reach’s work rate and style of play, he was due an injury lay-off in 2019/20.

Where will he play?

That’s a good question. Monk tried him behind the striker – where he played on Saturday – once or twice last season and he may well play a role there early on in this campaign.

There’s also the question of whether he’ll be used in the left wing-back role that is so important to the Owls’ current system, a position that appears to have been locked down by Kadeem Harris, or whether he’ll be used to add legs in a three-man central midfield.

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