Owls End to tunnel vision
SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY caretaker manager Lee Bullen says Steve Bruce’s coaching staff would have liked what they saw after their 1-0 victory over Preston.
Bruce (below) has been offered £2million a year to return the Steel City club to the Premier League and he sent his coaching staff Steve Agnew and Stephen Clemence to take on a watching brief from the chairman’s box.
And Bullen, who took charge of Wednesday following the sacking of Jos Luhukay on Friday and masterminded only their second win in 11 games courtesy of Michael Hector’s 62nd minute header, said: “I know the guys were watching from the stands (Agnew and Clemence) and I hope they take away that there is a very good team here and if they can play with that discipline and put out that type of performance then it won’t be a bad job to be going into.
“It’s been a tough few weeks and a tough last 24 hours, but take nothing away from the players.
“They knew their job and they deserve all the credit in the world for that performance. We dropped off after getting the goal, which may be because of the run we were on, but it was great to get a win.”
The game was sparked into life on 26 minutes when Preston’s Ben Pearson saw red for a lunge on Marco Matias.
It gave the Owls the boost they needed and they came close to opening the scoring eight minutes later when Adam Reach’s cross was headed goalwards by Steven Fletcher but keeper Declan Rudd managed to claw it away.
The home side came even closer on the stroke of half-time when Lucas Joao headed another Reach delivery against the post. It was pretty much one-way traffic in the second half and the Owls finally made the breakthrough when Reach’s cross was glanced home by Hector after a short corner.
North End rarely threatened but Tom Barkhuizen wasted a glorious chance when he headed over unchallenged from close range.
Preston boss Alex Neil said the sending off changed the game.
He said: “The sending off is a turning point. It was always going to be tough from then on.
“I am not sure it is a sending off, and it wasn’t the only decision that went against us.
“It was a poor game and I think if Ben doesn’t get sent off we would have gone on to win it, but the red card changes everything.”