Nottingham Forest 0 Sheffield Wednesday 2: Owls take advantage of Forest’s fragility

Forest are in danger of seeing their promotion challenge turn into a relegation fight amid a dismal run of just two wins in 20 games in all competitions.

Owls boss Gray is close friends with the Forest management team, headed by Stuart Pearce, but put them under more pressure as goals from Kieran Lee and Chris Maguire helped the visitors to an easy three points at the City Ground.

“I am stood here thinking that we should have won 4-0 with the chances we created,” said Gray. “The most important thing is that we did not want to give Forest a sniff. We wanted to turn their crowd against the team.

“They are low on confidence at the moment and we wanted to exploit that. We were at it from the off.

“The timing of the first goal gave us a lift and disappointed the home crowd, coming just before half-time.

“I knew that Stuart would want to get a reaction from his players in the second half, but we got another goal and credit to our players because, as I said, we could have ended up with a bigger win.”

Pearce commented: “We are suffering a lack of confidence at the minute, but I told the players that we cannot feel sorry for ourselves. I certainly can’t.”

Nottm Forest: De Vries, Kane (Paterson 68), Hobbs, Lascelles, Lichaj, Tesche, Vaughan, Osborn, Christopher Burke (Gardner 46), Assombalonga (Veldwijk 68), Antonio. Unused substitutes: Darlow, Laing, McLaughlin, Oliver Burke.

Sheffield Wednesday: Westwood, Palmer, Lees, Loovens, Dielna, Maghoma (Baker 81), Semedo, Lee, Maguire (Lavery 85), May (Helan 72), Nuhiu. Unused substitutes: Hutchinson, De Havilland, Kirkland, Mattock.

Referee: A D’Urso (Essex).

Man of the match: Chris Maguire.