Danny Rohl fires warning as he sees more positives than negatives in Sheffield Wednesday's 1-1 draw

The Owls had lost their previous three matches without scoring and the German responded by picking a side full, he said, of team players, not individuals, handing four their first Championship starts of the campaign.

And although it did not bring the three points after substitute Alfie Lloyd cancelled out Barry Bannan's stoppage-time goal following an almighty goalmouth scramble, it set a template for what Rohl expects from his players, and allowed him to fire a warning to anyone who has lost sight of it.

"I said congratulations to my team for a good performance," said Rohl after seeing his team utterly dominate the first half without being able to end their barren run in front of goal. "I think it was the best performance since Plymouth, we created chances, we were connected to each other in ball-winning moments, we had good transitions, good build-up, we worked as a team, not just as individuals.

"At the end of 90 minutes I said I'd take 0-0 today. Of course when you score very late you want to win this game but in football everything's possible.

"The corner is hard for the defence, there's so much chaos you cannot really see what happens. It's hard to take.

"How we got to this situation was a little bit of a shame. There was a foul on (Anthony) Musaba's leg.

"The next second we made an easy foul instead of staying behind and not allowing them to turn to gift them a present and these are the moments I am a little bit disappointed with but it's football and we have to learn from this.

"All in all, the direction was much, much better. You saw today what we changed in the last two weeks. In the end we want to win and if we perform like this we can win many games."

The biggest difference, said Rohl, was a much-improved team ethic, a not especially veiled warning to those who were left out of the team, although in the cases of Di'Shon Bernard and Jamal Lowe it was more to do with having been away on long-distance international duty.

"I said after Millwall I'm looking for the best team and not just the individual players," stressed the manager.

"The balances was much, much better, we had workers on the pitch and guys who want to run, like to run, players who are listening to what we want to do, players on the pitch who stay with the matchplan instead of making their own matchplan and it was good to see.

"It feels a little bit disappointing because when you score a fantastic goal like Barry's but I take the positives more than the disappointment.

"We invested until the end, that's the reason why we scored, but in football there's also an opponent who wants to come back.

"Against QPR last season we scored our winning goal very late into the game."

As for the failure to create possession and chances into goals, Rohl was philosophical.

"In the last three games we created nearly no chances so to turn this in just three weeks with nearly the same players, you can see development," he said.

"Of course we want the final edge. There was a fantastic moment when we switched the ball to Josh (Windass) and we had an overload, there was a good cross ball to Ike, the things we prepared.

"After two minutes we had a good moment and after the kick-off for the second half we had a good cross where we missed the finish but the basics were right.

"The thinking was also good, in the right moments we were thinking forwards. When you compare this to the Millwall game when we didn't attack the last line, we just played in areas where we couldn't score, this was the direction I wanted to see from my team.

"They were listening, we worked hard in the last 14 days and we invested a lot. We didn't win but the way was right."