The Owls have been hard at work at Middlewood Road as Henrik Pedersen puts his side through their paces ahead of their return to action in the Jersy Mike’s Trophy, and it’s going to be interesting to see what line-up the Dane goes with when they face Sunderland’s U21s.
The likes of Joel Akpobi, Sam Duruh, Fortune Onoh and Denny Oliver have been training with the first team this week, and while Ali Al-Hamadi is back with the Owls after injury cut short his spell with Iraq, there was no sign of him in training. Wednesday played an in-house game on Thursday as part of their prep.
Away from Sheffield, there’s been plenty happening on the international scene from a Wednesday perspective…
Kieran Morrison’s last outing was the standout, with the Liverpool loanee getting his first start for Northern Ireland as they took on Ukraine in the Nations League. He repaid Michael O’Neill’s faith in him by picking up his first international assist, and will be hoping that his performance will have earned him another start against Georgia tomorrow night.
Elsewhere, Harry Gray came on as a substitute for England’s U19s on Friday as they beat the USA 2-1, and he’ll be eager to get more minutes for his nation against Belgium tomorrow afternoon.
Will Grainger started for Wales U19s against Norway, but was brought off at half-time as Cymru fell to a 2-0 defeat. They’re back in action on Monday against Northern Ireland, with the FAW rejecting Wednesday’s request to get the teenager back to feature in the EFL Trophy.
Meanwhile, Devlan Moses missed out for NI’s U21 Euros qualifier against Georgia due to illness, but there’s hope that he could recover in time to feature against Greece on Tuesday.
And lastly, in a bit of a strange one, Yan Valery’s Tunisia were due to face Mali in a friendly on Saturday after their two African Cup of Nations qualifiers, but the friendly was called off because - according to Reuters - the Tunisian Football Federation were worried about risking a result that could affect their position in the FIFA rankings.
This article is available for free, but if you like what you’ve seen from The Wednesday Word, then a paid subscription would mean the world to us - and allow us to keep doing everything that we’re doing in the TWW universe. We want to keep improving, and growing, and for that we need your support! Thank you!