Why Stuart Armstrong didn't sign for Sheffield Wednesday much earlier - promotion hope discussed

The Scotland international, who signed for the club on a permanent transfer last week from MLS outfit Vancouver Whitecaps, was a Danny Röhl target after the club achieved Championship survival last season, though talks never quite reached an advanced stage. Armstrong had fallen out of contract at the end of a long and storied stint with Southampton and chose to take on a new challenge in Canada over taking up any offers in England.

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The articulate and softly-spoken 32-year-old arrives to bring promotion-winning quality to the Owls’ midfield. He expressed no glimmer of regret over his Whitecaps switch but did open up on how it made him re-evaluate what he wanted from the game. Enter Wednesday, and the opportunity to reunite with Röhl, who was an assistant manager at Southampton during their shared time at the club.

“When I left England I'd been in a sort of mill of football for a long time,” Armstrong said. “With Celtic as well it had been 10 years of intense football and I felt like I really needed a change. Sometimes you need to come out of something to realise what you value and what it meant for all those years. I did miss that and that was a big reason behind the decision to come back and compete.

“I was chatting a little bit with Danny in the summer but as I mentioned previously I was in the mindset then of needing something different. I needed to come away from it to fully gauge and understand my own thoughts and feelings about it all. I wouldn't say in the summer I was too open to the idea not only of Sheffield Wednesday but staying in the English game in general.

“It's a huge change on top of a huge change I only made a few months ago. There was a lot to think about, a lot of elements to the choice and the decision. Family plays a huge part. It's never easy when you decide to do something that big and then only a few months later you decide to come back and do the opposite!”

The 51-cap Scot is a two-time treble winner with Scottish giants Celtic and was grateful for the opportunity to train at their Lennoxtown training ground under his old Hoops boss Brendan Rodgers in the lead-up to Christmas. That experience, together with nearly three weeks of Vancouver pre-season including two friendly outings, has put him into a position he believes has him close to fully fit.

Wednesday sit two points from the play-offs and head into what looks set to be a ding-dong battle with a fellow top six contender at West Bromwich Albion this weekend. With so many teams in and on the periphery of the play-off conversation, Armstrong is experienced enough to know it will be some battle to qualify for the post-season shake-up. But, vitally, it’s a possibility.

“Coming into it fresh, simply put, there's only a few points between us and the play-offs so it's not unachievable,” he said. “In realistic terms there are a lot of teams fighting over two spots, maybe three, so we're under no illusions that it's going to be a tough challenge, but it's definitely possible.

“I know quite a lot of the boys from the past, I know their qualities and I know what type of people they are, so it's an exciting squad to be a part of.”