Sheffield Wednesday boss Danny Rohl has admitted he could recall striker Bailey Cadamarteri this window but that the situation is ongoing.
Cadamarteri is the Imps joint-leading scorer this season with five goals across all competitions, level with Jovon Makama and Jack Moylan. All four have been outscored in the league by Ben House (4), but that’s 20 goals spread across four players. However, Makama started 14 matches, Moylan started 14, and the Owls’ man started just nine. In terms of Football League minutes, Jovon has 966, Moylan has 994 and Cadamarteri 752.
It has led to speculation on the terraces that Cadamarteri could be recalled in January, with plenty of those ‘in the know’ types suggesting that a friend who knows the Sheffield Wednesday physios dog groomer has told them he’s definitely being recalled. That’s not the official line from Danny Rohl, who admits that minutes, not starts, will be looked at when making a decision.
“Of course we’ll look at the minutes,” he told the media. ‘But we know how the manager there works – he rotates a lot of strikers during the game and from game to game. For Bailey it’s about, even if it’s 10 minutes, to work hard, and he’s scored – which is good.
“It’s about taking it week by week, and then we will make a decision. But at the moment I don’t think it was the wrong decision to loan him out, and it’s important for him to go through these levels of resilience… Even if you’re a loan player from the Championship you can’t expect to play every game, for this you have to work hard. That decision comes from their manager.”
That certainly suggests there is no decision to be made yet, and I especially like the ‘you can’t expect to play every game’. Danny Rohl comes across as the type of manager I like – pragmatic and unswayed by press speculation. There’s no pressure on us to play Bailey and, on the other hand, no pressure not to. That’s also been levied at Michael Skubala, suggesting we’re playing our players to add value, but when Bailey’s minutes in the league are over 700, and his total minutes for us over 1,000, the value of his loan becomes a little clearer.
Finally, this sort of speculation also doesn’t feel as damaging as it might have done a year or five ago. We’re not in a position where a loan recall is going to hurt us this winter, and quite a few supporters might not recognise that. We’ve had years before where we’ve lost big players (Tyler Walker), or the press has been rife with speculation around recalls (I fell out with a certain Echo journalist over incessant stories about Brennan Johnson).
This season, if Bailey was recalled, he would be a loss, but not a fundamental one.
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