Sheffield Wednesday: "Bannan is everywhere.." Cambridge United boss says Owls man is best in League One

The Us are enjoying a successful return to the third tier after 20 years away and sit entrenched in midtable well clear of relegation concerns.

Wednesday play host on Saturday hoping to bounce back from defeat at Lincoln City last time out and climb back into the playoff places.

And asked about their opposition, Bonner joined a queue of League One bosses to have made no secret of his admiration for one Wednesday player in particular.

“They are a high crossing team, have a really good balance between direct play and possession play,” Bonner said. “They play with a back three and have been quite consistent with their team selection obviously recently because of results.

“I think they’ve got the best player in the league in Barry Bannan. I think he is outstanding, and I think he will cause us lots of problems and you see that time and time again.

“He is one that most managers talk about after games, regardless of who’s playing - everyone seems to talk about how good Barry Bannan is.”

Wednesday will be hoping to go one better than their 1-1 draw at the Abbey Stadium back in October.

Much has changed in the Owls camp since then, not least their sparkling recent run on form – Lincoln aside. Wednesday skipper Bannan has been moved further forward in a positional re-jig following the return of Massimo Luongo and George Byers from injury.

“I think we saw that first hand when they came here in the first game of the season,” Bonner said.

“We played with Adam May as an advanced midfield player. Bannan was playing a bit deeper then - he seems to be playing a bit higher up the pitch now - and we tried to get Adam to take away the threat and follow him round the pitch to get after him.

“Ads ran over to me after about 20 minutes, and just went ‘Bannan is everywhere’, and I went, ‘I know mate, all the best’.

“I think sometimes you’ve got some big challenges to overcome, and those players and these experiences are great ones for us and you can learn lots from those games.

“They will certainly test us in lots of ways but, also, what a game to look forward to, to go up there in front of 20,000 and however many we’ve got in the away end.”

Wednesday’s numbers are swelling after a second major injury crisis of the season, with the likes of Dominic Iorfa, Lee Gregory and Fisayo Dele-Bashiru available for selection. Bonner appreciates his side have a task ahead of them.

“I think they’ve got a real balance in their play,” he said.

“If you write the squad up, you just look at the depth and the numbers that they’ve got.

“Paterson and Kamberi have been playing, Gregory is back fit, Sow has played, Mendez-Laing is probably injured, Josh Windass is probably injured, Saido Berahino played last week, so there is six or seven strikers that they’ve got options of and they give them different varieties.”