From crisis to goalfest the Sheffield Wednesday Way
To sit back at full-time and think that the team who had just won 5-0, extending their unbeaten run to nine games to go within two points of the top of League One were under pressure a couple of hours earlier was just bonkers.
But that is Sheffield Wednesday for you. The enthusiasm of large sections of their fanbase is boundless, yet expectations manage to keep up.
Being decent in League One, even on the back of the most horrific season in the club’s long history, and still only a couple of months into a complete revamp, is not enough.
The players are as demanding.
"We need to get promoted," insisted Davis Keillor-Dunn after his two goals and an assist. "The club's far too big to be in League One."
Being firmly in the promotion running is not enough. Fans – at least some – expect to be royally entertained too. They had not been.
Back-to-back home games ended 0-0. Character, not quality, dug out a point at Huddersfield Town. Bromley, in August, stood as the only League One home game they had scored in this season, a 7-2 freak.
The football was stodgy, just like when Darren Moore took two years getting out of this division.
Manager Henrik Pedersen was under pressure. Could he change it?
Crucially, they walked the walk.
The first 25 minutes were invigorating, urgent, creative, it dynamic, fluid. It just did not yield a goal.
So when things went flat for ten minutes – because if footballing perfection exists, it certainly does not live in League One – you worried.
Then the Owls went bang, bang. And bang again.
A good performance became a great one.
Pedersen managed to rest legs ahead of Tuesday's trip to Notts County, yet still have players hungry for more. They scored five, but Keillor-Dunn and Kieran Morrison twice ought to have added to it.
Unlike against Bromley, there was no late laxness to concede twice.
"At Bromley, everything was fresh, everything went forward," he reflected. "Now we – or you – will call it a crisis (when the tapes stopped he revised that to "difficult period"), that we draw 0-0 at home.
"But I think this was a more solid game to the end where we keep the zero."
Pedersen is a good guy who did great service in a season of need. To survive at Wednesday, he needs to be a good coach too.
How players interchanged, how he moved Keillor-Dunn close to Jamal Lowe in a 4-4-2, showed he is. But he will be judged afresh on Tuesday, and if this is as big an outlier as Bromley, the verdict will be harsh.
"Davo is really good in the centre of the pitch, and he's the guy who can be behind the (opposition) sixes (deep-lying midfielders) but he's also the guy who can be the nine (centre-forward), so when Jamal naturally sometimes likes to come between the lines, then Davo also likes to run deep," explained Pedersen.
It added to the fluidity of the forward line.
Keillor-Dunn started wide on the right but the first chance came when Callum Slattery overlapped him from the hole and forced a save.
He was in the middle when he returned Barry Bannan's 38th-minute pass and the deflected shot dribbled in. A minute later, he robbed Andy Yiadom on halfway and doubled it.
"I was a bit worried running through because I always think that the ones that you have more time with, you start overthinking things," he admitted. "I saw little Harry Gray to the left and I was like, do I square?
"I was just like, no, just do what you've done over the years and just keep your cool, keep your composure and put it in."
When Gray, who went close twice in the first 25 minutes, got third time lucky, the game was won.
But they did not play the second half like it, Reece James bombing past Gray on either side, the front four still as potent, Morrison and Billy Mitchell off the bench to join in.
Slattery's first-time finish from James' 56th-minute cross made it four, and although it took until the 86th minute, Keillor-Dunn got the fifth with another composed finish.
Crisis – sorry, difficult period – what difficult period?
There will be another. If these players could play like this twice a week, they would not be in League One. When it comes, maybe best to keep everything calmer?
It is not the Wednesday Way.
Sheffield Wednesday: Maynard-Brewer; Valery, Bernard (M Lowe, 74), Cooper (Otegbayo 60), James; Heskey, Bannan (Mitchell 60); Gray (Morrison 80), Slattery, Keillor-Dunn; J Lowe (Al Hamadi 60).
Unused substitutes: Palmer, Trueman.
Wimbledon: Bursik; Yiadom, Johnson, Sessegnon; Sasu (Browne HT), Harrison (Nelson 65), Smith, Seddon; Maycock (Tilley HT), Hippolyte; Stockley.
Unused substitutes: Simmonds, McDonnell, Horan, Cornick.
Referee: E Heasilp (Suffolk).
GAME AT A GLANCE
Joe Lumley: Missed the game after taking a knee to the ribs at Huddersfield Town, and is expected to be out for two to three weeks. How did stand-in goalkeeper Ashley Maynard-Brewer do? Hard to say with so little Wimbledon threat to judge him on.
Don’t forget us: Whilst it was a day to praise the attacking players, this was the fourth straight clean sheet the Owls have kept at home.
The caveat: Wimbledon were disappointingly rubbish.
The challenge: Bromley came to stand out like a sore thumb with the home matches which followed; the Owls must now build on this performance and produce more of that attacking verve more often, even if no one can expect 5-0 every week.