Henrik Pedersen glad of Sheffield Wednesday's extra time on training pitch
Henrik Pedersen is looking forward to more time on the training pitch to gel his revamped Sheffield Wednesday squad.
The Owls have made a good start to the season, but Saturday's 0-0 draw at home to slow-starting Wigan Athletic showed there is more to do. It is hardly surprising after 18 summer signings.
But the next midweek League One game is not scheduled until late October and there is a strong possibility their matches in the three-week September/October international break might be postponed, meaning much more time at Middlewood Road to drill the areas where the team has been found wanting.
Especially in Saturday’s first half, they dominated possession and hit a post through Mason Burstow. But Wigan attacked better, hit the same upright through Jensen Weir in the second half and might have won had Gabriel Otegbayo not made a brilliant tackle in the eighth added minute.
"It's a very good beginning, more than two points per game, but we are always looking behind the result to see how we are progressing and what do we want to do better," reflected Pedersen.
"We have a lot to do still and we will have this for a long time.
"Defensively it wasn't dominant, but it was solid.
"We now have a week where we can train even more and it looks like there'll be a national team break (for the Owls), we don't know still. If we have the break, we'll have a lot of training time.
"If we don't have it, we still have Saturday, Saturday, Saturday games (with only a Football League Trophy match at Salford City in between). So we really have the possibility to train a lot.
"It's very important. We cannot only speak about how we want to play, we need to train it.
"We want to have a big focus on ourselves because we need to train our relationships, our connections, our ideas together.”