Sheffield Wednesday refuse to throw in the towel as they point way at Birmingham City

Birmingham City had started with the confidence of a home team unbeaten in its last 10 matches, Sheffield Wednesday with the messiness of a side which had won once in the Championship since Christmas trying to get its head around another change of formation and personnel.

At the Blues’ third corner of the first six minutes, Jacob Murphy saw Scott Hogan rush at him out of the corner of his eye and, in a panic, put the ball through his own net.

The confusion and lack of confidence in the Wednesday ranks was painfully palpable. Two weeks after experimenting with three centre-backs at Luton Town, only to ditch the plan at half-time, they had lined up in a 5-4-1 formation – although Fernando Forestieri’s wanderlust meant it was often more like 5-5-0 – yet there were five attacking options on the bench. Again, manager Garry Monk reverted to a back four at the interval.

So determined to make a point of not shaking former assistant Pep Clotet’s hand at Hillsborough in November, Monk even went back on that, thankfully. Life is too short. No grudges, said the Spaniard, who explained a lengthy post-match conversation on the touchline “cleared the air”.

It had taken 17 minutes for the Owls to have a shot – and even then, Murphy struck it against Forestieri, who was in an offside position. It was not like the safety-first, second and third formation did its job at the other end.

“We had to go right back to the basics of starting the game with a point and a clean sheet,” said Monk.

“That extra defender was to put us in the game but our best-laid plans went out the window.”

It just looked a question of how big Wednesday’s third straight defeat would be.

Yet when Monk talked a couple of hours later about being “gutted” to have to settle for a 3-3 draw, he spoke for most of an Owls persuasion.

Nine points behind the play-off places at kick-off and 13 clear of the relegation battle – albeit a possible deduction for misconduct over their attempts to wriggle out of the Football League’s financial fair play regulations could eat into that – it is easy to see how the towel could have been thrown in by players whose attitudes Monk has been unafraid to call out.

But their dogged determination not to accept defeat meant it was possible to take heart from their afternoon’s work, even if Hogan’s route-one goal seconds after the board went up to signal a minimum of four added minutes extended their winless run to seven Championship matches.

One thing Monk’s detractors cannot claim is his players have given up on him.

“The gaffer said at half-time our character has been questioned in recent weeks but you could see everybody on the pitch was willing to put a shift in for the badge, the club and the fans,” commented Barry Bannan.

The Scot led the fight, literally directing his team-mates as he began to see more of the ball.

His equaliser into the bottom corner rounded off a move started by Kieran Lee’s precise chipped pass to Murphy. Those incisive passes from 20 to 30 yards out gave hope once they started to appear, but Lukas Jutkiewicz quickly crushed it, playing a one-two with Hogan, then taking advantage as Jude Bellingham brilliantly screened the ball so he could beat Cameron Dawson.

Maxime Colin’s foul on Lee during a penalty-area scramble saw Forestieri level again, from the spot. Ivan Sunjic, well set up by Bellingham, and Kristian Pedersen, at a set piece, could have made it 4-2 to Birmingham at the interval, but did not.

“At half-time, I thought there was an opportunity to attack them if we weren’t going to get the clean sheet and I think we proved the point in the second half,” reflected Monk. “We were much the more dangerous team and created the opportunities to kill the game off.

“In the second half, I thought we had control of the game.”

Birmingham restarted strongly but by the time Murphy scored in the correct net, finishing off a counter-attack after Lee took Julian Borner’s clearance out of the sky and funnelled it right via Forestieri, they had run out of ideas. Plan A was seemingly that Dawson would drop one of Pedersen’s many long throws.

Murphy should have settled it, but the thinking time he and Lee Camp had ahead of their one-on-one worked in the former Rotherham United goalkeeper’s favour, and minutes later Camp brilliantly tipped a volley over the bar from substitute Connor Wickham. The fit-again Steven Fletcher and Morgan Fox came off the bench, too, further lifting Wednesday morale.

When Birmingham launched the ball long at the start of stoppage time, Jutkiewicz’s nod-down set up an excellent finish by Hogan.

“It’s really disappointing because we’re in a results-based business and we haven’t won again,” admitted Monk.

There was, however, a but. An important one in the circumstances.

“That was a lot more like ourselves,” he argued, quite rightly. “There was a lot of fight and passion.

“The competing, the desire, was right up there with what we saw before the period we’ve been in.”

With this Jekyll and Hyde team, you cannot read too much into one performance, but it was good to see the positive side again. We had almost forgotten what it looked like.