Wednesday gave themselves a mountain to climb as they conceded the opening goal in the third minute as Sil Swinkels couldn’t get out of the way of Joe Lumley’s intervention and could only watch as the ball bounced into his own net.
The Owls improved as the game went on, though, as they went up against their Championship opponents at Hillsborough, but were caught flat-footed just before the break as Saheed Olagunju made it 2-0 and effectively put the game to bed.
Speaking afterwards, Pedersen offered praise for his players for their general outing at S6, although was clearly unhappy with how Olagunju got on the scoresheet.
“Over 96 minutes I think it was a strong performance,” he said. “We gave ourselves a very difficult beginning, and for the first 10-12 minutes you could feel that it was difficult and that they were a strong team. We worked our way into the game though, with high pressing and we had the courage to do that… We won a lot of balls, and I think after that we started to be braver on the ball.
“We’d like bigger chances, but I do think we got stronger in the first half. It showed that we can have a difficult beginning but get stronger… To go to 2-0 in the last minutes was not necessary, it’s not good enough.
“The second half we grew again, through aggressive high pressing, we had a lot of interceptions and after the substitutes we started to be braver and more dynamic. Louie had a lot of action on the left side, Kieran on the right, so I think it was a good performance against a very strong team.”
Wednesday are back in action this weekend as they play host to Bromley in their third League One encounter of the season.
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I think the team is 5-6 games away from being near our best and that’s if Ali comes good (I actually think he will)
We need to sort right back, either Yan stays and is happy with it, or he is replaced either way we need it sorted out so we can settle.
Time for the window to shut and we concentrate on what we have. I hope I am right for HPs sake that would take him to 8 league games and I think he will need a meaningful improvement before the 10 game mark. Fingers crossed 🤞 🦉🦉🦉