Why Sheffield Wednesday have had to train away from Middlewood Road ahead of Millwall clash
Preparations for Sheffield Wednesday’s home clash against Millwall this weekend were moved away from their Middlewood Road training base due to the incredible rainfall seen in the last fortnight.
The Owls have spent different parts of the campaign training at Hillsborough stadium due to the weather, with midwinter having seen issues with frozen pitches. More recently, high levels of rain fall across the country has seen matches and training schedules interrupted, with league matches at Stevenage and Aldershot among those to have been postponed just this week.
Fresh off a rearranged fixture prompted by a waterlog postponement at Blackburn Rovers, the Owls had to take their preparation for this weekend’s visit of Barry Bannan’s Millwall to the stadium on Thursday, the latest of a handful of similar measures taken in the last fortnight.
Middlewood Road was not wholly unusable yesterday and some sessions have taken place as normal this week, but with one of the two outdoor pitches waterlogged entirely and the other holding water in several places, a decision was taken to move their penultimate training session of the week to the stadium on the basis that the available surface at the training ground was unsuitable.
“Yeah, the bottom pitch we couldn't use at all, and there were some small areas on the top pitch, but we wanted to play 11 v 11 today,” Owls boss Henrik Pedersen told The Star on Thursday. “We have to do everything to be to be prepared for the game on Saturday, and that's why we were in the stadium today.”
The condition of the pitch at Hillsborough has been a pleasant positive in what has otherwise been a miserable campaign at S6, with former Manchester City grounds chief Lee Jackson having earned rave reviews in a season many grounds have struggled. The condition of the pitch after the Thursday training session is not known, but Pedersen sees a mental benefit in training at the stadium.
He said: “There is for sure a football benefit, because we have a much better pitch in the stadium than we have on the training ground, so it's a good pitch to train at and the boys also like to train there. And then of course for a few of the young guys, there are a few guys still who have not played there and this is good for them.”