IT’S ANOTHER CAR CRASH FOR CARLOS
UNDER-pressure Sheffield Wednesday boss Carlos Carvalhal defended his position after his side slumped to a third straight defeat in a sevengame winless streak.
Wednesday were poor against Middlesbrough despite taking a first-half lead and could barely claim they deserved anything out of a game the visitors dominated.
But despite his side’s woeful run, Carvalhal pointed to the nine absences in his first-team squad to injury as the major contributing factor.
“You think that I’m happy? I am not happy,” he said. “If you plan to go to London, you take your car and maybe you think you will be there in three hours, but after 20 minutes you don’t have fuel and must put fuel in; and after we have a problem with the battery; and after the wheels have a problem. So instead of going in three hours you must go in four or five.
“But why wish that the car go very fast? To go very fast, I need everything perfect and everything 100 per cent because as you know, the market was not easy to us in the summer.
“Even if everybody is at 100 per cent the fight in the Championship will be strong, but that is not the reality in this moment.”
Boro striker Patrick Bamford had a goal disallowed for offside after just five minutes and should have put Middlesbrough ahead for real 13 minutes later, but inexplicably headed wide from Cyrus Christie’s excellent cross.
Wednesday went ahead with their first threatening move of the game, with winger Ross Wallace finding the bottom corner from Gary Hooper’s lay-off after good work from Adam Reach.
Martin Braithwaite wasted another good Boro chance on 39 minutes, going clean through on goal and rounding Joe Wildsmith before squaring the ball across the box to no one in particular rather than try to slot into the empty net from a narrow angle.
Braithwaite had the chance to atone for his earlier miss when teed up by Bamford, but Wildtheir smith threw himself across goal and stopped the shot.
Britt Assombalonga saw a second Boro goal ruled out for offside from another good Christie delivery on 61 minutes. Then substitute Jacob Butterfield felled Bamford in the box only for Wildsmith to save Grant Leadbitter’s penalty, Boro fans must have thought it was not day. But that deflation rapidly gave way to celebration as Wildsmith palmed Johnny Howson’s speculative 30-yarder into his own net – from hero to zero in less than a minute.
Boro kept pushing and almost got another slice of luck as Bamford’s attempted cross hit the bar.
Ryan Shotton was the man to finally deliver Middlesbrough’s first away win in four, heading home Downing’s corner late on.
Middlesbrough manager Garry Monk said: “There’s definitely some more questions to be answered but overall, the performance was excellent.
“When you have two disallowed goal situations that were onside – and we had the same last week – and then a missed penalty, you’re beginning to think a little bit on the inside, is there something going against you?
“But the characters in the team, the quality we played with, and the chances that we had…to come out and win after going behind, there’s a lot of questions and doubts that were thrown at us that were answered out there today.”