‘Proud’ Barry Bannan hits remarkable Sheffield Wednesday milestone

His 90+ minutes against Stockport County, which ended with a panenka penalty in front of the Kop, saw Bannan overtake David Hirst in the club’s list of all-time appearance-makers and enter into their top 20.

The Owls skipper has come a long way since his debut away at Burnley back in 2015, and remarkably only 11 of those 359 outings have come as a substitute – he’s started more games for the club than any other current player, including soon-to-be quadruple centurion, Liam Palmer.

He took to Twitter this week to speak of his pride at the achievement of going level with Peter Shirtliff, saying, “So proud and grateful to play this many games for this amazing club, many more to come.” By the time the season is done he’s likely to have broken into the top 15.

With his 29 goals and 63 assists the Scot is closing in on a century of goal contributions for the club since he arrived as a free agent eight years ago, and he’ll be relishing the opportunity to strut his stuff in the second tier once again this season following promotion in 2022/23.

The current top 20 as things stand is:

20. Barry Bannan | Peter Shirtliff – 359

19. Willie Layton – 361

18. Des Walker – 362

17. Tom Brittleton – 372

16. Tom McAnearney – 382

15. Ron Springett – 384

14. Liam Palmer – 398

13. Nigel Worthington | Ellis Rimmer – 417

11. Mark Hooper – 423

10. Teddy Davison | Ernest Blenkinsop – 424

8. John Fantham – 434

7. Don Megson – 442

6. Redfern Froggatt – 458

5. Tommy Crawshaw – 465

4. Kevin Pressman – 478

3. Alan Finney – 504

2. Jack Brown – 507

1. Andrew Wilson - 546