Sheffield Wednesday must thank Crystal Palace for transfer masterstroke | OneFootball

As Barry Bannan leaves Sheffield Wednesday after over ten years, it's time to pay tribute to a player who gave it his all for the Yorkshire club.

As Barry Bannan moves on to pastures new at Millwall, his former club can only be grateful that he gave so much for them following his transfer there, more than a decade ago.

The scenes at the end of Sheffield Wednesday's recent 2-0 defeat away to Bristol City spoke louder than words ever could. In tears in front of the supporters who'd idolised him for more than ten years, it was time for Bannan to move on.

Milwall wanted his experience to strengthen their push for a place in the Premier League, and with the sale of Sheffield Wednesday out of administration still not tied up, neither the administrators nor the player himself were really in a position to be able to turn it down.

Few could really argue with the decision. Barry Bannan was Wednesday's highest earner, and the administrators need to preserve the club as a going concern until the takeover is completed. Bannan now has the opportunity to try and help guide his new club into the Premier League. But the player wasn't the only one in tears at Ashton Gate as he said his farewell.

Barry Bannan made his senior professional debut in the UEFA Cup

Given that he was considered to be royalty by Sheffield Wednesday fans, it's appropriate that Barry Bannan should have arrived at Hillsborough from Crystal Palace. Bannan had first stolen the show as a 9-year-old ballboy at Scottish lower division club Albion Rovers, going on to join their youth system and spending two years in the academy at Celtic before joining the Aston Villa academy at the age of 14, in 2004.

After four years honing his craft with the youth team, Bannan made his senior debut for them in the UEFA Cup against Hamburger SV in December 2008. Sent out on loan to Derby County in the Championship in the following January's transfer window, he made his league debut for them in March 2009 away to Sheffield United, scoring for them in a 4-2 defeat.

A further loan spell at Blackpool would follow, where he was part of their squad which won promotion to the Premier League in 2010 before he made his full top-flight debut for Aston Villa on the opening weekend of the 2010-11 season against West Ham United. He'd be loaned out again - this time to Leeds United - in 2011, but in total he made 82 appearances for Villa before making his move to Crystal Palace in 2013.

Barry Bannan's move to Palace paves the way for Sheffield Wednesday legacy

In joining Crystal Palace for an undisclosed fee at the end of the summer 2013 transfer window, Barry Bannan was reunited with Ian Holloway, with whom he'd worked at Blackpool.

But Holloway left the Eagles less than two months after his arrival and, although he'd go on to make 27 appearances for them in all competitions, Bannan was unable to tie down a regular starting place under Holloway's successors, Tony Pulis and Neil Warnock, and was sent out on loan to Bolton Wanderers for the second half of the 2014-15 season.

But it would be his next move that would come to define his career. By the summer of 2015 Alan Pardew was the Crystal Palace manager, and Bannan was deemed surplus to requirements at Selhurst Park, dropping a division to sign for Sheffield Wednesday for an undisclosed fee. He made his debut for them on the 12th September 2015, in a 3-1 defeat at Burnley.

There's a case to be made that Bannan's career with Sheffield Wednesday didn't quite pan out as he might have hoped. Dejphon Chansiri had bought the club at the start of 2015, and Bannan may well have expected that the lavish spending on the playing squad which accompanied Chansiri's first couple of years at the club would be reflected in the club regaining Premier League status.

But this didn't happen. The history books will demonstrate that the purchase of Bannan was a masterstroke, but a lot of his other signings weren't and the money started to run out after a couple of years. Yet he displayed remarkable loyalty by staying with the club, even following their final day of the season 2021 relegation into League One.

He was their captain when they went back up via the play-offs two years later, and even last summer, with the club starting to unravel as a result of the owner's financial mismanagement, he opted to extend his contract rather than go elsewhere. The decision to leave for Millwall was perhaps inevitable, but it would be no surprise whatsoever to see him back at the club in the future in a coaching or management role.

With the protracted takeover of the club now likely to extend beyond the end of the January transfer window, Bannan's departure from the club - those tears on the pitch at Ashton Gate - are damning indictment on the way in which the club was run over a period of years.

But while Sheffield Wednesday fans might have been as tearful as him over his departure from Hillsborough, there will also be enormous gratitude for the years of service that he did give them. It's difficult to believe that Barry Bannan won't return to the club some day, in some capacity.