Wednesday’s hopes of an automatic promotion place were dealt a blow in a 1-0 defeat at Preston today.
We were reduced to 10 men on 66 minutes when Fernando Forestieri was sent off for a second bookable offence and matters got worse six minutes later when Joe Garner headed home the only goal of the game.
Our best chance of the game fell to Daniel Pudil early in the second half but he shot over from close range and the home side had their share of the openings before Garner struck.
Forestieri was booked soon after half time when the referee adjudged him to have dived under a challenge and he received his red card when he handled in the box.
Wednesday generally failed to find the tempo of recent performances and, although we had a couple of half chances late on, we rarely troubled Preston after falling behind and didn’t register a shot on target throughout the 90 minutes.
The defeat, our first in seven league games, sees us slip to sixth place with Derby moving back up to fifth following their win at Brentford.