Sheffield Wednesday were beaten 4-2 by Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road.
Sheffield Wednesday’s relegation fears may not have been entirely erased, after the Owls were comprehensively beaten by Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road on Tuesday.
Three goals inside the first 15 minutes from Paul Smyth, Jake Bidwell and Idrissa Sylla put QPR in full control against Jos Luhukay’s side – who were hunting their opponents’ 15th place ahead of the game.
Sylla’s penalty eight minutes after half-time extended the hosts’ advantage, and although Wednesday reduced the deficit through Fernando Forestieri and Atdhe Nuhiu moments later, they failed to find the two goals they needed to avoid slipping down to 17th place – after a 5-0 win for Saturday’s opponents, Hull City.
Summarising the Owls’ game for BBC Radio Sheffield, Jon Newsome offered the following reaction: “The frustrating bit for me is when you see them up the tempo in the second half. For 15 or 20 minutes we take the game to QPR, we create a couple of chances, we score goals, we looked like we were the better team.
“For me it’s all about the mindset, how you go out, how you start the game. At the end of the day, you can’t be going 3-0 down after 15 minutes and hope to be getting something away from home.”
The former Wednesday defender added: “The only smidgen of positivity would be Fernando Forestieri getting 80 minutes under his belt and scoring a good goal, and Atdhe Nuhiu continuing his scoring run.
“But we’ve played poorly. We’ve started the game atrociously, given goals away, defended poorly, we looked disjointed at times. I don’t think we got to grips in any stretch of the imagination with the formation that we played. It begs the question – why did we play that way?
“The difference between the two teams in the first half was that QPR were positive, they played with tempo, they got at us, they’d obviously been watching us, they pushed on our back four when we wanted to play slow, pedantic possession with the ball and they won the game in the first 15 minutes.”
After Hull, Sheffield Wednesday host Reading and Norwich City either side of a trip to champions elect Wolverhampton Wanderers, after which Luhukay can finally get to work on the squad he inherited from Carlos Carvalhal in January.
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