Senior players need to stand up at Wednesday
ADAM REACH acknowledges that he and his fellow senior Sheffield Wednesday players must take the lead if the club loses any key stars in the weeks ahead.
The Owls resume their Championship season at home to Nottingham Forest on Saturday and question marks remain as to whether the likes of top-scorer Steven Fletcher and influential defender Morgan Fox will stay at the club beyond the end of June.
Wednesday are in negotiations with the pair over contract extensions. They must reach a mutual agreement with players by June 23 for deals to be extended for the remainder of the season.
Among others, the future of Fernando Forestieri, out of contract at the end of this month, is also in doubt.
Reach said: “Obviously in an ideal world, we would keep them all. But as you have seen in the last nine or ten weeks, it is not an ideal world we are in at the minute.
“Thankfully, we have got them for the first two games and then we will have to see who stays and who goes. Hopefully, the club are working on that to get some clarity for everybody.
“I’d imagine Saturday might come too soon for that. But as players like myself who know they are going to be there next year and know we are going to finish this season, we are going to have to stick together.
“Whether we have some players for some games, no games or all of them, that should not affect the way we work.
“But hopefully, the guys re-sign and play the remainder of the season.”
Meanwhile, Reach admits that the possibility of the club potentially being docked points this season if they are found guilty of breaking Financial Fair Play rules represents an added motivation for Owls players in their quest to put some further daylight between themselves and the Championship relegation zone.
The former Middlesbrough midfielder added: “What the manager is trying to instil in us and what we need to believe in ourselves is that it is one more motivation to pick up as many points as we can in these remaining nine games just in case something like that happens and we get charged – I don’t know. Hopefully not.
“We need to use that as one more reason why we need to win games and pick up as many points as we can.”