Sheffield Wednesday never truly saw Nottingham Forest factor with EFL hero – He did show Hillsborough glimpses | OneFootball

Having been brilliant at Nottingham Forest, Lewis McGugan could only show flashes of brilliance at Sheffield Wednesday.

To have had a player on loan twice and then on a permanent basis for three or so years and never see nearly the best of him, despite that player being widely recognised as an EFL cult hero, is utterly bizarre.

That is the case for Sheffield Wednesday supporters and Lewis McGugan, who showed flashes of brilliance at Hillsborough, but never quite lived up to what he had achieved with Nottingham Forest.

The Long Eaton-born attacking midfielder came through the academy at Nottingham Forest, and he shone for the Reds over a seven-year stint that saw him make 229 appearances for the club before a move to Watford.

After a season at Vicarage Road, which was by no means a poor one, McGugan struggled with the chopping and changing in Hertfordshire, so was loaned out to Wednesday, where he would struggle to rediscover the magic of his Forest stint.

Lewis McGugan was magic at Nottingham Forest - he had a catalogue of worldie strikes to match

The former England youth international had his injury problems from the off at Forest, having only made it to 40 league appearances in one season out of seven.

However, he still managed to mark himself out as one of the best attacking midfielders in the second-tier, with a penchant for scoring ludicrous goals as a talismanic figure for the club.

His best season came in the 2010/11 campaign, as Forest reached the play-offs with a sixth-place finish, before suffering a 3-1 aggregate defeat to eventual play-off winners Swansea City.

Forest had been second with 15 games of the season to go, but slipped all the way down to eighth due to a nine-match winless run of form through the spring, but it was McGugan who provided much-needed respite to drag Forest into the play-offs.

Winning their final four games of the campaign, McGugan was excellent in all four games and scored crucial goals away at both Bristol City and Crystal Palace in that run.

In the 2012/13 season, as Forest missed out on the play-offs on the final day of the season, McGugan was once again brilliant in an injury-hit campaign with eight goals in 30 appearances from midfield.

With Forest wobbling, McGugan almost single-handedly reignited their top six push, too, with goals in six successive matches in the spring to give them a chance of glory.

Able to run his contract down though, McGugan's form earned him a move to an ambitious Watford side, and he performed well in his first season as he hit double figures for goals in just 34 appearances for the Hornets, but he was soon to be out-of-favour in Hertfordshire.

Lewis McGugan showed flashes but underwhelmed at Sheffield Wednesday - he was not the player Nottingham Forest had

However, with Watford already onto their fourth manager of the campaign by early October 2014 in the form of Slavisa Jokanovic, McGugan found himself out of favour and loaned to Sheffield Wednesday by mid-November.

At Hillsborough, McGugan began well after an initial one-month loan, and he returned to the club in February, going on to win the Player of the Month award for the side in both February and March, playing a key role for the Owls as they finished the season 13th in the Championship table.

The following season, McGugan had moved to Yorkshire on a permanent basis, but the appointment of Carlos Carvalhal more or less put an end to his time in Sheffield, with the Portuguese publicly dismissing McGugan as a player for his style of play.

There were glimpses in his loan spell at Wednesday that the form he showed at Forest and then in his first season at Watford could be consistently repeated, but he was eventually forced by the summer of 2017.

McGugan finished up his EFL career with an underwhelming stint at Northampton Town, before coming out of retirement in 2022 to become player-assistant coach at Loughborough Dynamo.

For the ability he had, McGugan should have probably made it into the Premier League at some point in his career, but it was not to be for him - he was somewhat of a Championship icon for his long-range screamers, but Sheffield Wednesday couldn't see that side of him on a consistent basis, which was unfortunate for the Owls.