Secret of Sheffield Wednesday injury success touched on in explanation over Barry Bannan policy

Bannan recently came back from a hamstring injury that cost him four matches on the sidelines including their instant classic FA Cup win over Newcastle United last month.

But either side of that lay-off the Scot has been ejected early from matches to the stage that he has not completed 90 minutes since the 0-0 draw at Derby County in early December.

“It's about managing his loading,” Moore said on the 33-year-old playmaker. “He'd just come back from that injury but we've been able to integrate him back in and the ways the games have gone, it's probably allowed us to bring him off with those 10, 15 or 20 minutes left to play.

“He's got himself back up to full fitness now and to add the match minutes into his training is good. He's feeling good and it's certainly nice to have him back. With Baz and all the players, everything we do here is to help and maintain them.”

Moore has spoken for over a year about the need to instil the findings of investigation into repeat muscle injury crises that have plagued promotion campaigns in the past – not least last season in which Wednesday fell short at the play-off stage.

Aden Flint and Akin Famewo were proactively taken out of the side for last weekend’s visit of MK Dons having played a number of matches in a short space of time after long periods out.

And alongside more careful management of workloads have come tweaks to the routines and training programmes installed at Middlewood Road. At current, it seems to have been paying off.

“Our emphasis is prevention, not cure,” Moore reiterated. “That's why we've introduced a lot of stuff such as biometric testing, our sports science department has increased, we've also introduced yoga in here. It's trying to prevent injuries rather than cure them.

“As well as that, you have to make decisions in terms of volume that goes into the players because we want to keep them playing for us as long as possible.”