Help enlisted to get to bottom of Barry Bannan Sheffield Wednesday injury mystery

The comeback timescale of an injury keeping Barry Bannan away from Sheffield Wednesday’s

play-off push remains something of a mystery.

The Owls skipper watched on from home as his side ground out an

impressive 1-0 win at Swansea City on Wednesday evening,

the second match he has sat out through injury on the spin.

A key man in what has been a burgeoning season so far,

there remains no firm indication of when he may return to contention,

with manager Danny Röhl unable to narrow down a timescale from one week to six.

Svante Ingelsson stepped into the Owls midfield alongside Shea Charles in South Wales to good effect,

with Josh Windass taking on Bannan’s armband in a deeper role than usual.

It serves as a display of Röhl’s intention to rotate the squad as they prepare to enter the crucial end of a

campaign that sees them sat two points from the top six in eighth place.

How much of a role Bannan is able to play in what is hoped to be a late dart upwards remains to be seen

and confirmed suspicions it was an issue he had been carrying heading into last weekend’s

home draw with Luton Town.

“It is difficult to say,” Röhl told The Star when asked for a progress update on the Scot’s recovery.

“It could be seven days, it could be six weeks, four weeks. We have to look how is the reaction.

It is about the load management, controlling the reaction.

“It was in the QPR game he had a problem.

We tried to manage it during the week and then after the Luton game he was not able to walk for three days.

Now let’s see what it means in the following days.”

Fellow key man Di’Shon Bernard has been ruled out for the rest of the campaign with a knee issue and

though the issue for Bannan is expected to see him back for the business end of the season,

work is ongoing behind the scenes to ensure his recovery is successful.

Care will be taken to ensure a safe and speedy recovery and

help has been enlisted in the form of specialists to get to the bottom of how his recovery can be best aided.

“We contacted specialists, we made scans, now we manage him and we have to find the treatments,”

Röhl said. “It’s now about load management and if the pain comes back we have to stop it again,

this is all of it. Let’s see how he is in the following weeks.”