Injury fears eased over Sheffield Wednesday defensive pair Liam Cooper and Ricardo Santos
Owls injury update emerges after pre-season friendly
Any fears that a pair of Sheffield Wednesday defenders have suffered serious injuries can be eased.
New signing Ricardo Santos, and fellow centre-back Liam Cooper, did not feature in the behind-closed-doors friendly defeat to West Brom at the weekend. But the pair were in attendance for Tuesday night’s goalless draw against Hallam which saw two youthful Wednesday sides given a runout in both halves at Sandygate.
Both defenders have had their injury problems but Owls first-team coach, Pete Shuttleworth, told The Star there are no big concerns over the duo.
He explained: “Sometimes you just have a little bit of tightness, sometimes you just have little bits of knocks, it just keeps people out for a week. It is nothing major to worry about. Both will be ready for the first game of the season, I am sure. They will be with us on Sunday going to Budapest.”
Wednesday’s under-21s took to the pitch in the first-half at Sandygate before being replaced by the under-18s at the break. It was a competitive pre-season outing which saw Mudd and Giles Coke lead from the sidelines with Henrik Pedersen watching on further back.
The likes of Cole McGhee, Reece Johnson, Jarvis Thornton, Sean Fusire, Will Grainger and Devlan Moses played the first 45. Although still young, they gained plenty of first-team experience last season in the Championship.
“We are really pleased with the workout,” Shuttleworth continued. “Obviously we picked two teams to get 45 minutes of football into them. We are really pleased with what we got out of the game. We wanted to see if the kids could stand up to the physicality, how well they could deal with the basics of the game and I think they did that. We asked them to get up to the ball, win first balls, win second balls, we knew what the game would be like. For some of the lads, who have never experienced that before, it was a really good learning experience. Unfortunately, we could not find the quality to break them down in both halves, that is the slight disappointment.”