Ernie Weaver grabs fan votes as Svante Ingelsson earns landslide Sheffield Wednesday award win
Svante Ingelsson has been rewarded for his impressive step-up in responsibility at Sheffield Wednesday with the club’s first player of the month awards of the campaign.
The Swedish midfielder was a regular fixture in the side last season, having played 35 times in Championship football. But a fiercely energetic style of play meant he was regularly substituted or came on from the bench and across the entire campaign he completed 90 minutes on only three occasions.
That tally has already been surpassed this time out, with Ingelsson having played every minute of the Owls’ league effort so far in a handful of different tactical roles. The former Hansa Rostock man is one of a number of Wednesday players to have stepped up in the absence of mass squad depth and those efforts have been rewarded with whopping 51 per cent of votes in a poll of Owls supporters naming their player of the month.
Skipper Barry Bannan took 14 per cent of the vote share in no small part due to a remarkable goalscoring performance in their comeback draw at Wrexham, while teenage defender Ernie Weaver (pictured above) claimed an impressive 11 per cent share for heroic efforts in the Carabao Cup against Bolton Wanderers and Leeds United - while he also strode on for his league debut in defeat to Stoke City.
On the step up many squad members are making after the departure of so many players over the summer, manager Henrik Pedersen said: “Most of these boys have not payed 90 minutes for a long time and of course many of the boys were not regular starting 11 players last season,” Pedersen said. “They have to get used to playing 90 minutes, 80, 70, 90 minutes. But the boys are working really, really good. They are working all together through this.
“I can see that the boys are growing and they are not falling into ‘Everything is good or everything is poor’, they have different colours in their analysis. They know that where we do something well, we can do more somewhere to be more effective. Here we can grow or maybe we have a problem next time.
“The boys are interested in the game. I hear them speaking in the half-time about doing this or that better, stopping doing something or doing more of this. They are so very motivated about football and they are motivated to grow.”