Sheffield Wednesday 0 Wigan Athletic 0: Extra attacking options count for nothing as Owls draw a blank

Not on Saturday, it did not.

The Owls have scored eight goals at Hillsborough so far this season, but seven came in one game against Bromley, the other in the first round of the League Cup.

A 30,725 crowd booed them off at full-time against Wigan Athletic.

These are early days for a squad still gelling after a complete overhaul, but there are problems for Pedersen to solve to justify his new-improved contract.

An hour into Saturday's 0-0 draw, Henrik Pedersen brought proven third-tier centre-forwards Davis Keillor-Dunn and Ali Al-Hamadi off the bench to try to grab a game that was slipping away from them. About a quarter of an hour later, prodigiously-talented Leeds United forward Harry Gray was thrown on too.

None of the made a significant difference, with none of that firepower creating a single decent chance against a side who hade taken just three points before their trip to South Yorkshire until the game went into stoppage time.

And this was not the home side struggling to break down a side who came to park the bus. The Latics got less adventurous and more cynical as the second half went on but like their exalted hosts, they hit the woodwork in their quest for the opening goal.

The Owls took the first-half initiative, as well they might at home to a side who have made a poor start to this League One season. But the Latics did not play like that, keeping the Owls honest on the counter-attack.

Playing alongside Jamal Lowe in a 4-4-2, Hull City loanee Mason Burstow hit the woodwork inside five minutes. Yan Valery picked out his curving run and with none of his team-mates able to keep out, he found himself having to take the option of a shot from a tight angle, and clanged it against the near post.

The Owls get pressing on, a good ball from Ricardo Santos releasing Callum Slattery - drifting into the middle from the left wing, as he often did. Slattery came inside but his shot was blocked.

But Liverpool loanee Kieran Morrison looked the most likely for the home side.

Barry Bannan released him to carry the ball goalwards in the 17th minute but he too found himself at a tight angle, and his shot was beaten behind for a corner by Joe Whitworth. The corner was played short to Slattery, but Santos glanced his header just wide.

Reece James was just unable to get on the end of a dangerous cross in from Morrison, and another had to be put behind by Fraser Murray. Morrison made space for a shot Whitworth had to get down low to, then had another blocked.

He would not pose the same threat in the second half.

Not that Wigan did not play their part in the opening 45 minutes with some dangerous counter-attacks.

Liam Cooper made two important interceptions - one in the 14th minute as Reggie Walsh put the ball in and the next to cut out a Jon Mellish shot.

Not long afterwards Walsh forced Lumley into a low save at his near post.

His hands could have been stronger from Walsh's 40th minute shot, but he got it behind for a corner.

The half ended with Valery accelerating onto the ball and forcing Whitworth to save with an outstretched right boot.

With Wigan looking the more likely scorers at the start of the second half, manager Pedersen was forced into a triple change. It might have been a quadruple because Gray was stripped off and masked up, only to be sat back down again.

He made it on eventually, for Lowe - ineffective in his first match as League One's player of the month for August.

Although both sides had flashed untouched crosses over from the dugout side of the field, and although Bannan had seen an improvised effort deflect for a corner, it was the Latics on top when Pedersen shuffled his pack in the 61st minute.

Finley Burns' shot under pressure was deflected over after the Owls failed to deal with a ball in from the right, and a minute later Jensen Weir's shot got all the way through to Lumley's left-hand post - possibly with the help of a deflection.

So Pedersen brought on Keillor-Dunn and Al-Hamadi, tweaking their shape to a 4-2-3-1, and replaced the injured Valery with Liam Palmer. Wigan responded with two attacking changes of their own.

They did not stem the tied and when Gabriel Otegbayo replaced Santos - never likely to complete 90 minutes on his return from injury - the groans as he gave away a sloppy pass reverberated around Hillsborough.

Referee Sebastian Stocksbridge allowed the game to become bitty, and Wigan were happy to encourage it. He did, at least, add eight minutes on as compensation.

Gray's frustration spilled out too, in an 89th-minute booking.

He did at least come up with the best things the Owls could muster in the final half-hour-and-a-bit, a cross-shot punched away in stoppage time, then a volley over the bar. In between time Palmer threaded in Keillor-Dunn, but Al-Hamadi's flick from the ball in went nowhere.

Were it not for an important Otegbayo tackle as substitute Scott Hogan bore down on goal in the final added minute, it could have been worse still.

But there was no one of an Owls persuasion grateful for the point.

Sheffield Wednesday: Lumley; Valery (Palmer 61), Santos (Otegbayo 74), Cooper, James; Morrison, Mitchell, Bannan, Slattery (Keillor-Dunn 61); J Lowe (Gray 78), Burstow (Al-Hamadi 61).

Unused substitutes: Maynard-Brewer, Weaver.

Wigan Athletic: Whitworth; Carragher, Burns, Fox, Mellish; Power, Gray (Harris 87); Murray (Barrett 84), Weir, R Walsh (Costelloe 70); Perkins (Hogan 70).

Unused substitutes: J Walsh, Sze, Burrowes.

Referee: S Stocksbridge (Tyne and Wear).