Wednesday dropped out of the top six after being hit by two late goals in a 2-1 defeat at Blackburn.
We looked to be heading for a fortunate three points when substitute Jacob Murphy headed the ball home from close range with just seven minutes left, after Stephen Fletcher’s close-range effort had come back off the underside of the bar.
However, that all counted for nothing as Rovers equalised with two minutes remaining when Tosin Adarabioyo outjumped the Wednesday defence to score with a looping header. Then, with the game in added time, we failed to clear properly inside the box and when the ball was reworked to John Buckley his shot took a big deflection off Sam Hutchinson to wrongfoot Keiren Westwood and seal the points for the home side.
Even then, Wednesday almost grabbed an equaliser when Fernando Forestieri’s 20-yarder deflected off a defender onto the foot of the post. The rebound found Hutchinson but his fierce effort was pushed away by keeper Christian Walton.
The defeat sees us drop to seventh place on 24 points, one adrift of the play-off places and four points behind new leaders Leeds.
Wednesday had hardly troubled the Blackburn goal in the first half, despite forcing nine corners in a very poor opening 45 minutes from both sides.
Westwood did pull off an excellent early stop from Sam Gallagher’s header and the keeper twice had to be at his best again after the interval. blocking from Lewis Travis when he looked set to score and then tipping over another header, this time from Joe Rothwell.
Home keeper Walton, who had kept out just about our only noteworthy effort of the first half from Kadeem Harris, foiled the same player 15 minutes from time when he pushed away the winger’s curling shot.
However, the game looked to be drifting towards a tepid goalless draw before that late three-goal drama.
And when we look back at the overall performance, it was disappointing to see Wednesday lacking the creativity and intensity of last week’s encouraging display against Leeds, particularly against such mediocre opposition.
Westwood, Palmer, Iorfa, Börner, Fox, Reach (Murphy 70), Hutchinson, Pelupessy (Forestieri 61), Lee, Harris (Nuhiu 77), Fletcher. Unused subs. Dawson, Odubajo, Winnall, Hunt.