Dave Challinor pleased to see Sheffield Wednesday players speaking his language in Plymouth Argyle win
Dave Challinor was pleased to find his new Sheffield Wednesday players thinking along the same lines as him as they looked to build a first-half lead which he admitted was at times down to "luck more than judgement".
After starting his time as Owls manager with consecutive cup defeats, Challinor won the one that mattered most, beating League One promotion rivals Plymouth Argyle 3-0 at Hillsborough to move into the League One play-off places.
In truth, the Owls were poor in the first half but where Argyle missed their chances, they did not, taking the lead with a deflected strike from Billy Mitchell, his first goal since 2021.
And they were better in the second half without being sparkling, adding goals from Davis Keillor-Dunn and Di'Shon Bernard.
It left Challinor with areas to work on as well as three points.
"Okay," was his verdict when asked what he made of the performance. "I think we've got loads to do.
“To come here, score three goals, keep a clean sheet, at times maybe luck more than judgement, certainly in the first half, with some of the opportunities we gave away, it is amazing.
"I think you look at the first half and I was really open with the players and asked them what they thought.
"Sometimes it takes 10 minutes to earn the right (to play), sometimes it takes 60 minutes, sometimes you never earn the right.
"Plymouth are really good at asking questions of you, and in the first half I don't think we've dealt with them questions well enough at times, and maybe need to compete better and win first contacts and drop on second balls and track runners and probably got away with it a little bit at times. They were really honest about that and said that was the case.
"The second half was much, much better. I thought we dealt with their threats and then we were able to make the game look a little bit more like what we'd want it to look like.
"It shows, again, the importance of set pieces at any level, but especially at this level, to score from them too.
"Dish's goal is the icing on the cake."
As for what his message was at the interval, Challinor said: "Exactly the same as at the start of the game, you have to compete, you have to outrun, you'd love to outplay, we want to try and smooth things out if we can, but you're playing against a team every single week that's trying to stop you do what you might want to do, and sometimes the game doesn't look like you want it to look like.
"That's just how football works.
"With that being the case, find a way. I think it's a big saying around the football club and around the city, find a way to dig in and win in certain ways.
"If you can win it in every different way, then as a football team, you're in a really good place. We'd all love it to look a certain way, but we're not entitled enough to think that's ever going to be the case.
"So it was, can we still do the things we need to do better, compete and win second balls, and then can we have a composure, come down some levels to try and play the game, or play the game in a manner that what we wanted it to look like?"
Keillor-Dunn's goal was his sixth in nine appearances and, after a prolific first haf of last season at Barnsley, Challinor revealed he is working on ways to maximise the forward's output.
"We did some work with Davo and some of the other forwards around their scoring capacity over the last five seasons. You look at Kyle Whopton, who's the top scorer in the league. Davo's outscored Woots in terms of goals in the last five seasons and without giving too much away, where Davo scores his goals are all very similar.
"I just felt he'd spent too much time, not in them areas, too much time in wide areas. He's the best finisher we've got at the club. He's lethal when he gets in, apart from the chance he had about five minutes before he did score.
"So we need to get him in there more, we need to keep him in the middle of the pitch, we need to keep him in the box, we need to service it and put balls in where he might not score from the first contact but he's lethal and clinical from second balls that drop.
"The goal that he scored is his type of goal, a drop down, drop on a second ball and a really good finish."