Tomorrow’s game at Hillsborough is one of those which can’t be considered without looking at the opposing squad. Let’s hope this doesn’t come back to bite us on the backside!

Wednesday’s squad is scarily weakened. In fact, it’s at its weakest state of a grim season, as Barry Bannan left at the start of the week. Anyone who saw the game at the SToK Cae Ras will know just how good he is, and how important he was to Wednesday.

They have two spaces in their squad, with Nathan Redmond having left in midweek. He isn’t a loss, though: he arrived as a free agent, made six unimpressive appearances as a substitute and was released.

A glance at the squad list above shows how weakened they are, although since I made this they did draft in Jerry Yates, who has 40 career Championship goals to his credit. It’s sorted in order of minutes played for Wednesday this season, and shows just how many of this season’s mainstays are not going to face Wrexham. Yan Valery missed last Saturday’s game, but is expected to be fit: all the other injured players appear to be unavailable.

It’s feasible there could be other key players missing, too. Wednesday are in no position to turn down market value offers for their better players, and Svarte Ingelsson and Bailey Cadamarteri have both attracted offers in the last couple of days. There’s also talk about injured goalkeeper Pierce Charles, Max Lowe and Valery leaving before the deadline on Monday – we’ve been tentatively mentioned as being interested in the latter. If a deal is in the offing, especially for Ingelsson or Cadamarteri, Wednesday might feel that selecting them and taking a chance on them picking up an injury would be a risk they literally can’t afford to make.

If this possible line-up is right, six of Wednesday’s starting line-up would be 24 or under: Reece Johnson and Jaden Heskey have four career league starts between them; if Valery isn’t fit, next in line is Cole McGhee, who has seven career appearances under his belt.

The bench looks very thin: keeper Logan Stretch has one substitute appearance in the FA Cup under his belt, and Favour Onukwuli, Joe Emery and Devlan Moses have yet to make a start in their careers. If manager Henrik Pedersen plays Ingelsson in his more usual advanced position rather than drop him deeper to replace Bannan, his options to partner talented Manchester City loanee Heskey are Jarvis Thornton, who has started five league games in his career, and Rio Shipston, whose ten career starts came while on loan in the Irish league. Olaf Kobacki, meanwhile, is on his way back from injury.

In summary, the substitute’s bench I’ve suggested above hardly gives Pedersen much scope to change a game in mid-course. Take Jamal Lowe out, and the other eight have eleven EFL starts between them. Six of them made their professional debut this season to go alongside two of the starters. We’ve already dropped two points to The Owls, and it would be a disappointment if we dropped any more.