Liam Palmer’s ‘perfect’ Sheffield Wednesday day – and praise for classy Barry Bannan

The long-serving Owls defender racked up his 350th appearance in the 2-0 win over Bolton, leading out the team as captain and scoring the second goal in what was Wednesday’s most complete performance of the season so far.

Wednesday’s longest-serving player was in fine form as be bounded up and down the right side of the field, and was on hand to smash home in the first half after a lovely throughball from Josh Windass found him in the box.

“I couldn’t have dreamt for a better day to be honest,” he told The Star. “I said in the pre-match press conference that I’d be happy with the three points, but I was half lying really - I wanted it to be a good occasion, something that I remembered fondly.”

And an occasion is exactly what it was as they kept a clean sheet and rose up to fourth in the League One table.

Palmer joked that his parents – who are away on holiday and missed the occasion – could go away more often if this was what happened, but also heaped praise on his skipper for his decision to hand him the armband for his milestone appearance..

“Fair play to Baz for speaking to the gaffer about that in the team hotel, he showed his class in recognising my achievement. I know he’s not far behind!

“And then to top it off we got the three points, put in a performance, and a goal is nice as well.

“Baz messaged me earlier in the week about taking the armband, and he spoke to the Gaffer about it. I thought it was a really nice touch - and I’ve got a nice shirt to take away.

“It was a perfect day in terms of personal accolades and how the game has gone.”

Palmer is now just eight games away from matching David Hirst’s tally of 358 appearances for the club, and if he can overtake that then he’ll enter into the top 20 on the list of all-time appearance-makers in Wednesday’s long history.

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