Wednesday’s depressing start to the season went from bad to worse in a first-half mauling at Birmingham this afternoon.
The home side’s Jesse Lingard, on loan from Manchester United, all but settled the contest with a 13-minute hat-trick – having opened the scoring 0n 20 minutes – and he added a fourth soon after half-time to make the remainder of the game a formality.
Kamil Zayatte scored a consolation goal on 67 minutes from loanee debutant Stephen McPhail’s excellent free kick but thst was as good as it got for the thousands who travelled from Hillsborough.
Wednesday again showed a distinct lack of a stomach for the fight – being outfought and out-thought all over the pitch – and leaving Dave Jones with a major task to turn things around for next Saturday’s S6 derby with Doncaster.
Jones said afterwards: “I don’t think they bottled it – they just didn’t get a grip of the game.
“One or two of them made stupid errors which cost us dear.”
He added: “For a 10-15 minute spell we allowed them to do what they wanted. I haven’t seen that before. Too many people didn’t do the basics.”