Stuart Gray reflected on another shocking home performance from Wednesday as they signed off the league season at Hillsborough with a lifeless and disjointed 3-1 defeat to Bolton.
We found ourselves three-down inside the first 30 minutes to goals from Neil Danns, Lee Chung-Yong and Liam Trotter … and all the goals could have been avoided.
Joe Mattock failed to clear and allowed Danns to net for the first, the same player then delivered a misplaced pass which enabled Chung-Yong to shoot past Chris Kirkland, when the keeper should have done better. And Caolan Lavery allowed Trotter to break clear before looping a spectacular effort over Kirkland for goal number three.
Mattock pulled one back before half-time with a thunderous 25-yarder but there was to be no second-half revival, with Wednesday looking devoid of ideas, energy and commitment.
Indeed, it was left to Kirkland to produce two excellent saves to foil Danns after the restart and so prevent a heavier defeat.
Gray said: “It looks like we’re going to need four goals to win any game at the moment because we’re gifting goals with individual errors. Our quality on the ball should have been a lot better.
“If I was to evaluate the season, I’d say the first 18 games were very poor and from December onwards it was better. We’ve now got dragged back down to being very poor again, which is disappointing.
“They did well and counter-attacked against us. They’ve got pace in the team, but we gave the ball away far too cheaply and didn’t close them down enough.”
This was Wednesday’s fourth successive home game without a victory, conceding 13 goals in the process.