Sheffield Wednesday leaders and social media blackout key to dealing with derby defeat, says Josh Windass

The Owls' inconsistency sees them go into November's international break 15th in the Championship after 15 matches.

Since winning two, then losing two in August, they have not had the same result in consecutive games.

It suggests they need to be better not just at dealing with setbacks, but good days too.

Either side of beating Norwich City they suffered two big defeats in their last three matches – one because of the margin of defeat, 6-2 at home to Watford, the other because of the magnitude, their first match against Sheffield United since 2019.

Windass says his team-mates need to block out the noise, and that players such as himself must set the right tone in the dressing room.

"Stay off social media!" he said. "Everything gets amplified in there.

"But we do the analysis with the manager and I think it's just the characters around the dressing room, if your stronger characters are depressed and leading a bad environment, I don't think you can recover from that.

"But we know how good we are as a team and how good we can be. We showed that against Norwich."

He practices what he preaches.

"I deleted Twitter (now known as X) a long time ago," he revealed. "I only see Instagram and there's not much on that."

Although Di'Shon Bernard is in Jamaica's squad for their Nations League quarter-final against the USA, the majority of senior players will be in Sheffield during the international break. Ike Ugbo is not in Canada's squad for their quarter-final against Suriname.

Not over-reacting to setbacks can apply in games as well as between them. Of the 23 defeats the Owls have suffered under manager Danny Rohl, nine have been by three or more goal margins, including three this season.

"When you find yourself 3-1 down after 50-odd minutes (as Wednesday did against Watford), looking back now – and I didn't think this at the time – I think you've just got to ride the storm out a little bit and try and get back into the game but we just kept playing the way we were playing,” said Windass, pictured.

"But it's easy saying that now, sat here. If I'd have thought that on the pitch, maybe I could have got that message across but even I was thinking, 'We need a goal to get it back to 3-2.'

"I think we can all learn off stuff like that and get back into the game like that or maybe just lose 3-1, it's less damage than 6-2. That's not what I was thinking at the time."

Striking the right balance was on Rohl's mind when his side went behind to Tyrese Campbell's 50th-minute strike on Sunday.

"We changed straight after the 1-0 to bring on a second striker (Michael Smith) and a winger (Djeidi Gassama), and then you have to look for the story of the game you can't go all in after 55 minutes,” said Rohl.

"We put the next offensive guy in (Anthony Musaba) and immediately had a chance. I think you have to do it step by step, level by level."