Lee Bullen had harsh words for Wednesday’s performance after a lifeless 2-1 home defeat to QPR on Saturday.
We took the lead midway through the first half thanks to a Steven Fletcher penalty after Fernando Forestieri was fouled in the box but that was as good as it got, with Wednesday mustering just one other shot on target in the 90 minutes.
QPR looked the more dangerous side as the first half wore on and continued in the same vein after the break, turning the game on its head with two goals in the 60th and 64th minutes, both quick moves clinically finished by Adam Hugill.
We then rarely looked like getting back into the game, the only real opening coming when Fletcher couldn’t get a connection on Barry Bannan’s cross and Atdhe Nuhiu failed to turn the ball home at full stretch as it progressed to the far post.
The defeat sees Wednesday slip to 11th place in the table and, while we are only one point from the play-offs, there will need to be a vast improvement in performances if we are to have any realistic chance of troubling the top six positions as the season progresses.
A clearly unhappy caretaker boss Bullen said afterwards: “I’ve been at the club long enough to know the demand of the support and that performance, especially in the second half, was nowhere near acceptable for a club of this size.
“To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement. It was lethargic, not enough movement and we didn’t move the ball quickly enough.
“In the first half we had little spells when we did switch play and decided to get the ball out to our full-backs. On occasions we did that, but we never did it enough, we never did it quickly enough and in the second half we never did it at all.”
He added: “The performance was poor, lacklustre and one-paced, especially in the second half.”
He said he had decided to go for a 4-4-2 formation as we have been failing to convert so many chances in recent games but admitted that it did not work.
Bullen said: “In the second half the players looked as though they thought they had done enough.
“I felt we played in second or third gear, we had another couple of gears to go but we decided to coast it when we needed to up the tempo.”
Referring to the goals conceded, he commented: “The two goals are things you wouldn’t see in a primary school match.”
And Bullen added that skipper Tom Lees was a late withdrawal after feeling a hamstring tightening in the warm-up, Dominic Iorfa stepping up to the starting line-up, with David Bates taking his place as a substitute.
Westwood, Palmer (Murphy 75), Borner, Iorfa, Fox (Luongo 67), Reach (Nuhiu 75), Hutchinson, Bannan, Harris, Forestieri, Fletcher. Att: 23,446.