Owls steal the show as they get set for final act
WHEN they needed it most, when the expectation levels were at their highest, Sheffield Wednesday’s players rose to the occasion.
Anthony Musaba drove at the heart of the West Brom defence time and again.
Barry Bannan harried and created, led and inspired.
DiShon Bernard and Dominic Iorfa repelled everything that came at them and when they couldn’t, James Beadle was there to fling out a hand.
Will Vaulks threw his body on the line, doing so even in stoppage time with the game long since over as a contest.
“You see us defending our box like it was 1-0, not 3-0,” enthused Danny Rohl, the conductor of this great survival act that has just one more scene to play out at Sunderland next Saturday.
To have their destiny in their own hands after the start they made to the season is down to the German.
When he joined in October Wednesday were as good as cut adrift. Three draws, eight defeats from 11 games.
Morale was so low the rookie head coach couldn’t rouse them instantly and they lost five of his first six games in charge. Even the turning point, a ‘92nd-minute’ equaliser
against runaway leaders Leicester City on November 29 only gave the most optimistic of fans a glimmer of hope as they still slipped to 12 points adrift of safety that night.
But something had stirred. “Our ability to come back from setbacks,” was how Rohl put it when asked what one thing he’d point to as key in their charge to survival.
That and some front-foot football, never more so in evidence than on Saturday when their direct running, particularly that of Musaba, had West Brom going backwards. How a team as passive as the Baggies are in the top six makes a mockery of the Championship’s reputation as a tough division.
Still, they had to be beaten if Wednesday were going to take a sizeable step towards safety, and beat them they did.
Musaba was the talisman. You never know what you’re going to get with the 23-year-old Dutchman but on a day when the Owls needed him to put his foot down, he put in a fullthrottle performance.
His opportunism resulted in the first goal on 22 minutes when he slid the ball home at the second attempt from an acute angle.
His direct running created the second, just when Wednesday needed it most at the start of the second half to quell any chance of anxiety growing among the vast majority of the 33,000 inside Hillsborough.
When his drive into the box was stopped as he was about to shoot, Ike Ugbo picked up the pieces and slammed the ball into the roof of the net.
And then Musaba’s purposeful running created the clinching third on 67 minutes, chasing a break into the right-hand corner and teeing up Bannan.
Wednesday’s indomitable captain unleashed a shot from 25 yards that Alex Palmer could only beat into the path of Josh Windass who took a moment to look at the Kop and then send them delirious by planting the ball into the empty net.
All three goals coming from Wednesday’s desire to be first to the second ball.
Prior to that Ugbo had hit a post after another piece of Musaba magic and Windass headed against the bar from a deep Bannan cross.
West Brom tried to respond but Beadle was equal to headers from Brandon Thomas-Asante and Kyle Bartley.
"Today our team was really on fire,” said Rohl. “I could see this in the week, the last two weeks have been fantastic in training.
“For me it was nearly the best performance against the ball, defending as a team.
“I’m really proud, we beat a topsix team, in the last five games we’ve taken 11 points, that’s an average of two per game. For a team towards the bottom of the table that’s not so bad. But it’s been small steps, you need a lot of points to stay in the league this season.”
Wednesday have won 47 under Rohl, 43 of those since December.
“One more,” he said, “just one more of this.” And a team that has spent 42 of the 45 games played in the bottom three this season will have survived relegation.
Sheffield Wednesday: Beadle, Palmer, Iorfa, Bernard (Famewo 86), Valentin, Vaulks, Bannan (B Diaby 77), Johnson, Musaba (Paterson 76), Windass (Gassama 76), Ugbo (Smith 76). Unused substitutes: Dawson, Pedersen, Cadamarteri, Mo Diaby.
West Brom: Palmer, Furlong, Bartley, Kipre, Townsend (Fellows 55), M'Vila (Mowatt 55), Yokuslu, Phillips (Reach 55), Diangana, Johnston (Swift 71), Wallace (Thomas-Asante 55). Unused subs: Ajayi, Maja, Chalobah, Griffiths.
Referee: G Scott (Oxfordshire).