‘Written off’ Sheffield Wednesday are believing again – Owls skipper sees playoff mentality returning

An impressive 3-1 win over Hull City on Monday saw Wednesday move up to 22nd and close the gap on 21st place to just three points, giving them a huge boost in their efforts to avoid relegation despite their horror start to the campaign.

The Owls picked up just three points from a possible 33 in their opening 11 games of the season and were being touted as favourites for the drop, but Danny Röhl’s revolution has seen them pick up 19 points from 15 matches – including three wins from the last five.

And Bannan admits that they knew how important it was to start 2024 on a high, praising the manager for the work that he’s done in bringing the belief back to S6.

Speaking to Sky Sports after the game, the skipper said, “Coming off the back of a couple of losses over the Christmas period we knew it was going to be important to bounce back - but we’ve had a good December and we knew that this was the last game of a tough, testing period. We were at home in front of this crowd, and we knew that if we won’t then we could catch teams because they kicked off early.

“I thought we were in the game and playing really well, but obviously when they go down to 10 men it gives you a bit of an edge and a boost. But we’d started well, and that was important.

“We’ve been written off… After the first 10 games we were written off, but we were written off in the semifinals last season in the playoffs and we showed what we can do then. We’ve been written off plenty of times, but the manager has come in and given us great confidence.

“He believes in the way he wants to play and he’s passed that on to us. So we’re also believing as well, we’re all together and the mentality of last season is slowly coming back to this group of lads. We’re playing with confidence now.”