Cardiff City 1 Sheffield Wednesday 1: Carlos Carvalhal bemoans Owls' misfortune

Late strie: Cardiff Citys last-kick equsliser from Sol Bamba.
Picture: Steve Ellis — Late strie: Cardiff Citys last-kick equsliser from Sol Bamba. Picture: Steve Ellis

Gary Hooper’s 39th-minute header – the striker scoring in four successive league games for the first time since February, 2008 – looked like handing Wednesday a rare victory in the Welsh capital.

But Bamba secured a 1-1 draw in the fourth minute of stoppage time when Keiren Westwood pushed out Lee Tomlin’s free-kick and Nathaniel Mendez-Laing drove the rebound across goal.

“Both Sheffield Wednesday and ourselves are two of the better sides in the league,” said former Sheffield United manager Warnock.

“They have the purists and we have the never-say-die attitude and some good players as well. It’s like winning a game, I’ve been on the other end of games like that and you’re distraught that you can’t believe you’ve thrown points away.

“But I thought we deserved it in the second half, we had 12 efforts to their two.”

Cardiff lost the leadership of the Championship in midweek when they suffered a first defeat of the season at Preston and Warnock felt there was a hangover from that 3-0 reverse as Wednesday passed their way around them in the first half.

Wednesday had not won on any of their previous seven visits to Cardiff, a run stretching back to April 2007.

But after Steven Fletcher missed a golden opportunity to double Wednesday’s lead in the second half, Carvalhal said: “Before the game most of the teams in the Championship will say a draw in Cardiff is good and not a bad result.

“But we are disappointed because we lose two points, we scored one goal and I thought we could achieve a second one.

“We had the best opportunity to kill it with Fletcher and, at that moment, we must finish the game.

“I am still waiting to win a game in the last minute because we have had four draws now – and we have played better than the opponents in all of them.”

Cardiff City: Etheridge, Peltier, Morrison, Bamba, Bennett, Ralls, Gunnarsson, Mendez-Laing, Bryson (Tomlin 82), Hoilett (Feeney 71), Zohore (Ward 82). Unused substitutes: Ecuele Manga, Richards, Damour, Murphy.

Sheffield Wednesday: Westwood, Hunt, Lees, van Aken, Pudil, Lee (Wallace 75), Jones, Bannan (Butterfield 86), Reach, Hooper (Nuhiu 88), Fletcher. Unused substitutes: Rhodes, Palmer, Wildsmith, Frederico Venancio.

Referee: L Probert (Wiltshire).