Barry Bannan's vote of no confidence in Sheffield Wednesday's short-term future a challenge to next owners
There was a grim inevitability about Sheffield Wednesday losing players this month.
The Owls are heading for League One and have bills to pay until a takeover is completed. Any Championship recruitment department not considering how they can take advantage of that would not be doing their job properly.
So Manchester United loanee Harry Amass being moved on to Norwich City was a blow, but not a shock.
It makes the team he leaves much weaker, but makes no difference in a fight against relegation which was lost long ago.
Waving goodbye to Max Lowe, Yan Valery and/or Svante Ingelsson will be hard to take, especially when squad numbers are so low and getting permission to sign replacements is proving so tough for the club’s administrators. For home-grown talents like Bailey Cadamarteri and Yisa Alao even more so, but it is the circle of footballing life.
But Barry Bannan?
The club legend's tearful departure – with a move to Millwall expected to be completed this week – is a massive vote of no confidence in the short-term future of a football club so dear to his heart.
Everyone in the Owls squad bar those added in the winter chose to stick it out when most if not all could have followed the lead of Michael Smith and Josh Windass and left on free transfers as the crisis around Hillsborough escalated beyond control. Supporters should be grateful to all of them, even those who change their mind this month after being worn down by it all.
But only Bannan turned down interest from other ambitious Championship clubs – Millwall included, we are led to believe – to sign a new contract on vastly reduced wages. Only Bannan not only trained with the squad when out of contract in the summer but continued to lead the whole club as captain at a time when manager Danny Rohl had clocked out.
Forget 10 years and 477 games of high-quality football from an outstanding midfielder, what Bannan did at the peak of the turmoil to hold the club together and make sure lesser-paid colleagues beyond the playing staff were looked after deserves a Hillsborough statue.
For a player of his calibre to spend two seasons in League One when again he could easily have left, spoke volumes.
Bannan has yet to speak to the media about his reasons for leaving but we are told he has been seeking assurances about the future of the club.
The Football League have to take their time vetting would-be owner James Bord's bid to buy the club. After the embarrassment of knowing they rubber-stamped Dejphon Chansiri’s ownership – albeit a decade ago – and with a new football regulator able to mark their homework, they cannot afford to get this high-profile decision wrong.
But every day the Owls are without the new owner they so badly need, things get a bit twitchier for a fanbase that has already been put through so much.
Whether Bannan has doubts about Bord's bid succeeding, or whether he is not convinced the 2010 World Series of Poker European Champion's vision for the club is the right one, we can only guess at this stage.
A quote recently reported from a source close to Bord that "he’s not too concerned about sorting out the stadium initially" suggests a sticking plaster approach to a club which needs major surgery.
Maybe if we knew more about those plans it might be more reassuring, maybe not.
But what we can say for certain is that when Bord – or perhaps apparent fall-back Mike Ashley, or maybe someone else – takes the keys, they need to hit the fanbase with a real hard sell of a vision quickly.
The new regime has already lost one diehard before taking over, they cannot afford to be losing hundreds or thousands more.