Positives to build on for Sheffield Wednesday after points appeal

So said Garry Monk, manager of the Championship’s bottom team after watching Sheffield Wednesday become the first team to beat Bournemouth in the league this season.

A 12-point deduction for financial fair play breaches – cut to six after the club successfully appealed the decision – is misleading, but only slightly, the Owls being the 16th-best performing team in the 2020-21 Championship.

Monk’s reflections on a deserved 1-0 win hinted at where the problem might be. When pressed he denied it was complacency but did suggest a weakness in adversity. Either way, the problem may be between the ears, and it is his job to solve it.

Victory ended two horror runs for the Owls.

It was their first home win in 12 games and, more immediately, ended a sequence of four straight defeats anywhere, the last three without scoring, a run that had come on the back of a hugely encouraging win at Birmingham City. Perhaps too encouraging.

Before the season began, Monk set his team the target of wiping their points deficit out by next week’s international break.

Now they host Millwall on Saturday in the black, with five points, but remain bottom after Wycombe won last night at Birmingham City.

“We spoke in the first few days about what we needed to do and set ourselves a target,” revealed Monk. “The minimum was by the time we reached this international break to be out of that 12-point deduction.

“The feeling after Birmingham in that changing room was: ‘We’re going to do it earlier.’ The confidence was there. So to get the week we had, which was terrible – I just can’t put my finger on it.”

It made one wonder if the players got a bit giddy with the St Andrew’s victory. So one asked.

“I don’t think we were getting carried away because we’re pretty level and there’s a demand for better and more,” said Monk.

“Just for whatever reasons, we didn’t deliver the level – whether that was confidence or not dealing with adversity well enough – and it simply was a terrible week, a terrible three games.

“I thought the Brentford game was different but when the doubts are around you, you have to fight. We had a team fighting on Tuesday, that was the most important thing to see. To get a result on top of it, great.”

This Wednesday side is infuriatingly hard to predict. Monk says he saw a determination in his players’ eyes on Tuesday, “but I saw that in the warm-up before Wycombe!”

He chuckles, a welcome shift from his tense interview after that game, but this is no laughing matter for Owls fans.

“It’s never intentional or a lack of preparation, hard work or understanding,” he stressed. “It happens.

“You don’t want it to happen and you can’t accept that and you take responsibility.

“Last week wasn’t acceptable at all but the best medicine is to respond.”

Red cards and injuries are not helping. On Tuesday, Kadeem Harris became the third Owl dismissed in four matches, but Monk plans to appeal.

“Kads does a tackle, the lad’s on top of him, tries to pin him down and he’s trying to wriggle free,” he said.

“The problem is we haven’t quite got the footage.”

Tom Lees missed the Bournemouth game because his wife went into labour that morning, and fellow centre-back Aden Flint is set for an operation on the hamstring injury picked up at Rotherham United.

“It was innocuous, a block of a cross, but he just felt a pop in his hamstring so it’s definitely not going to be a short-term one,” said Monk grimly. “I think we’re talking a good few weeks at best.”

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