Belief key for Sheffield Wednesday in spectacular return to Championship

F or Barry Bannan it ultimately came down to iron-clad belief. Yes, Sheffield Wednesday did not play well in the League One playoff final on Monday, and yes Barnsley arguably deserved to win given the fight they showed after being reduced to 10 men, but Wednesday’s captain was never in doubt – his side simply had to triumph. More than that, they knew they would.

The collective sense of destiny sprung from that semi-final victory against Peterborough, a 4-0 deficit overturned on a raucous, rollercoaster, incredible night at Hillsborough. There was no stopping Wednesday after that as far as Bannan was concerned and that meant, one way or another, overcoming Barnsley on what proved to be a hot day at Wembley in more ways than one. As he put it after Josh Windass got the job done with the latest of late winners: “The main thing for us was turning the [Peterborough] game around. We won it then. Promotion.”

And so Wednesday are back in the Championship after a two-year absence and Bannan, having celebrated with teammates, family and friends, outlined how important a strong mentality was for the team in terms of resetting and going again after 96 points ended up not being enough to secure automatic promotion for the first time in English league history. It was, as Bannan put it, a “devastating” setback, and in that regard there was an individual within Wednesday’s ranks of little acclaim who, arguably, proved just as important as any coach or player to their eventual success: the sports psychologist Tom Bates.

Bates, having worked at clubs including Cambridge United, Charlton Athletic, Bournemouth, Brentford and Aston Villa, and with Team GB Olympians, was hired by Wednesday shortly after their relegation from the