Sheffield Wednesday will step up preparations for their Championship clash with Nottingham Forest next Saturday, by hosting an intense 11 vs 11 warm-up game this week.
Owls boss Garry Monk has been reluctant to arrange friendlies with other clubs, instead preferring to keep things within the sterile environment created at their Middlewood training facility, and the Sheffield Star say there’s likely to be a warm-up game on Wednesday ahead of the Championship resumption at Hillsborough next weekend.
Sabri Lamouchi’s Reds themselves were back in action on Tuesday, beating Premier League side Wolves 2-0 at Molineux thanks to goals from Tyler Walker and John Bostock.
Speaking recently, Monk explained why he would be reluctant to either invite opponents to the Steel City, or travel further afield and put players’ health at risk before the season kicks-off oncemore.
I think from a health perspective, with this virus, why would you invite a group of people from outside into your sterile environment? I don’t see why you would do that," he said.
“We’ll do it in-house, that’s the safest way in terms of player welfare and looking after ourselves.”
The Owls went into the enforced Covid-19 break on the back of a poor run of results including a 5-0 trouncing at the hands of Brentford, and Monk says his players have had chance to reflect on their displays during the stoppage.
"I have spoken to a lot of the players and they have used this time to reflect. The majority of the group have come back in a really good condition which shows they have reflected and understood what they might be coming back into,” he said.
"We were not on a good run, especially with the last result, and the aim is to try and reflect that and try and put a strong end to the season with the remaining games.”
