Blades are ready to withstand pressure from Owls

For a second successive round of fixtures, the Blades were left playing catch-up on Saturday after the Owls made it a two-horse, one city race for the second automatic promotion spot in League One by winning 2-0 at fourth-placed Huddersfield.

Dave Jones’s side again leapfrogged the Blades into second place but Danny Wilson’s men responded with a 2-1 home win over Bournemouth and will be ready to do it all again tomorrow at Rochdale.

That is if the Owls can defeat Oldham Athletic at Hillsborough this lunchtime.

Wednesday manager Jones believes he cannot ask any more of his in-form players after they ruthlessly swept aside Huddersfield, who are virtually assigned to a third successive tilt at the play-offs. Whether the Blades or Owls join them remains to be seen but Wilson does not believe his side are under any more pressure by having to play after their Steel City rivals.

After Saturday’s victory, a relaxed Wilson said: “It is one step closer and if we can go to Rochdale and get a good result like we have done today I think it will be very interesting over the last four games.

“This was a big result but I don’t expect it to be any easier at Rochdale as they are fighting for their lives. It’s a tight pitch at Spotland and we will go there with our sleeves rolled up ready for a fight because we are going to have to.

“I don’t think it makes much difference at this stage of the season if you play first or second from my point of view.

“We have just to look at what we are doing ourselves more than anything. I don’t think we felt the pressure today after what happened before we played.

“I think the fans were more anxious than we were and that’s understandable but we have already answered a couple of questions after we have had to play second. We have got very positive results and if that is going to be a trend then long may it continue.”

Counterpart Jones, who remains unbeaten since taking over from Gary Megson seven games ago, maintains he will take no notice of rival results and prefers to laud the efforts of his own vibrant squad.

When asked what will be key in the run-in, Jones replied: “Winning football matches.

“That’s all we can do. You can’t have any control over other games but just win ours.

“Everything we asked of the players (at Huddersfield) they’ve done. I couldn’t fault them.

“We knew we had to get the three points if we wanted to keep the challenge up and that’s what we did. Now we look to Oldham.”

Pragmatic Jones insisted it mattered little that their dominating performance, where Wednesday bullied the hosts and struck them down with two quality strikes, came against one of their promotion rivals.

Gutted Huddersfield could have leap-frogged them into third but flew to Bournemouth yesterday for today’s game on the south coast now trailing the Owls by six points.

“You know what, I’d have got just as much satisfaction if they were bottom of the league because it is about those three points – it doesn’t matter who you play,” added Jones, who has an injury doubt over Reda Johnson today after he limped off with hamstring trouble.

The classy manner of Wednesday’s display suggests they will push United all the way in the battle to join likely champions Charlton in gaining automatic promotion.

Lively attacker Nile Ranger – who turns 21 on Wednesday – caught the eye as he scored his first goal since joining on loan from Newcastle United while his slick combinations with the equally fleet-footed Jermaine Johnson and Michail Antonio meant they posed so much cutting edge.

“Pace is everything and we’ve got it all around our side not just in the forward areas,” said Jones.

“But you can only utilise that if the people behind them are picking the passes out and I thought the boys in midfield certainly did that in the second half.

“We then got Nile more into the game as he was finding good pockets where he could turn and run at people while JJ and Michail caused them all sorts of problems.

“The side’s learning to shut down matches and, when we controlled the game a little higher up the pitch in the second half, we could have had three or four goals to be fair.”

Huddersfield manager Simon Grayson refuses to concede defeat in the race for second spot. He said: “It doesn’t end our automatic promotion hopes but it certainly dents them.

“Anything’s possible but that result obviously makes it more difficult for us.

“Even if we win all our games and Sheffield United win all theirs we couldn’t catch them so it’s always been in other people’s hands to throw it away.

“If we have to go into the play-offs we’ll be positive and try and win it that way but we’ve still got one eye on trying to get into that top two.

“We’ll bounce back for Monday at Bournemouth when we might need to change a few players around.

“That has been a real demanding game.”

Match reports: Pages 2 & 3.