Marvin Johnson highlights positive spin on Sheffield Wednesday’s shortened break

The 32-year-old had options elsewhere as his contract at Hillsborough came to an end, but he decided to stick around and pen a new deal with the Owls after playing a big role in their promotion out of League One last season.

Wednesday’s promotion via the play-offs meant that they got a shorter break than most of the other teams in the English Football League, but Johnson thinks that that’s maybe not such a bad thing as they return slightly fresher than some of their counterparts.

Speaking to the club’s official website, ‘MJ’ said, “You lose around three-and-a-half weeks when you go through the play-offs but there’s pros and cons with that!

“There’s no better way to do it in my opinion, by winning at Wembley…. The break has been short which means, when you come back to pre-season, the start won’t be as hard!

“We’ll all be at a certain level of fitness already and we can hit the ground running. The pre-season getaways are always good. It’s good to spend a week with the boys and spend plenty of time together in the off-time as much as on the training pitch.”

Johnson was also asked about the season opener against Southampton on August 4th, which will be the first English Football League game of the campaign, and he said, “I’m not too surprised that we have the first game to kick off the EFL on the Friday night… We played Southampton in the cup last season, so we had a taste of it, and we gave our all but obviously we lost on penalties.

“We fully enjoyed the game, and every game will be like that this year, so we can’t wait to get into it.”

Johnson has played 95 times for the Owls in his two seasons so far, getting 29 goals and assists along the way – of the current group of players only Barry Bannan currently has more Wednesday assists than the former Middlesbrough man does.

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